Holiday Blues

Ever feel like your life is nothing that you wanted it to be? Some days I spend remembering my childhood. Not that it was perfect, by many peoples standards it was pretty lousy. I try to not dwell on those days but the memories of the good ones. Birthdays, Christmas mornings, Halloween trick-or-treats, Thanksgiving Day dinners and Easter. How many of us have a fond memory that we retain of those days?
When I became Muslim I was barely 22 yrs old. I was recently divorced and my two daughters were living with their dad (that's another book in itself). I lost most of my family when I converted and kept some contact with aunts or uncles mostly on my fathers side. My fondest memories are of small things. Finding that one last Easter Egg down Grandmothers blouse, blowing out candles on my 16Th birthday cake, a pregnant hobo for Halloween costume and the pajamas we all got on Christmas Eve to dress in so we would look nice the next morning when mom was taking our photos. Those are the days I choose to remember.
So, lately I have been quite depressed. I returned back to the USA about two months ago now and most of my day is spent thinking of how soon I can go back. I married when I was Muslim about four years, and my husband had lived in the USA about 6 years by then. He had given up on celebrating Holidays as except for Ramadan meals with local brothers their were no families to spend the days with. By the time I came along he was starting to build a nice "rut" to live in. My daughters did not live with me so I never had holidays or birthdays to share. We were married Oct 3, and our first holiday together with my family was Thanksgiving. My family invited us to share the day with them. As usual mom and I prepared the meal for the day and the men sat in the living room watching a football preview. Things went pretty well until the meal prayer. Now you need to know that my family was in no way religious but two times a year Dad would say a prayer. One at Thanksgiving and one at Christmas dinner. Everything went smooth until Dad blessed the meal in the name of Jesus (pbuh). My husband mumbled something under his breath and hardly ate a bite of the meal. I apologised and later asked him why he had not eaten. He was angry that Dad had referred to Jesus (pbuh) when blessing the meal. OK, so next time I will ask Dad to just say "thank God". Next holiday was Christmas. This is also the day that the US Government says my husband has a birthday. He does not agree but who are we to argue? Anyway, the meal went smoothly as I reminded Dad to please just thank "God". But as the day wore on family came in and out and the fun of spending the day with relatives began to eat at hubby. He was brooding in the kitchen. My aunt asked me what was wrong. I told her well he may be missing his family and it was also his birthday. My aunt decided to solve his problem. She walked into the kitchen and asked him to stand up. She sat down and grabbed him quickly and pulled him over her lap and began to spank him (birthday spanks), boy did his face go red. He was later telling me that no one had ever touched him but me and his mom and he was embarrassed. Later he got use to my unusual aunt!
Finally, a few months later we moved to Colorado. Here there are no families. In the beginning we never celebrated the Ramadan or Eids as he said they were for kids. I went to the mosque and served dinners during Ramadan until my first son was born. Then it became "they are too young", quickly followed by "they don't want to go tramping in mud to kill a lamb", and now we are at "if mom does something we celebrate it" stage. I tried to make the holidays something. One year going for traditional ideas and the next using ideas from my pasts. None really stuck. Not if Dad is never home. And the ideas the community come up with are geared more towards the younger set.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving, a day by which I have always tried to keep. Not for anything more than it is the one day when I can fix a "comfort" dish. Leave home and you will know what I mean by a "comfort dish". I started the day trying to find out when or if we would go shopping for computers on Friday. You know how we have those GIANT sales the day after. We had promised the kids a few computers and there was a sale that was good on them. But he was moody so I saved most of the discussion for later in the day. The night before I had injected the turkey with some butter and a mix of seasonings and placed it in the fridge. So by 11 am I pulled it out and started the cooking. Hubby made his famous mashed potatoes and I got out dishes for olives, salad and gravy's. A small dish of stuffing and we were set. I had recently got rid of two dining chairs and pushed the table down to a table for four, so we put a table cloth on the living room floor and placed the food on the table. We all sat together on the floor except Suhayb, who wanted to be close to the food. I wonder why? Well except for one we were all eating at the same time in the same place. A rare occurrence anymore. It was nice. No one was joining us this year. I had asked a friend who was recently divorced but she had plans so it was just us. We all sat and ate our meals in relative quiet. Nothing like the dinners of my youth. We finished and I gathered up the dishes and put what I could in the dishwasher. The rest sat on the table til early evening. By then all the turkey was gone but a few small strips of dark meat. I put away the leftover gravy, potatoes and olives and cleaned up the kitchen. Thanksgiving was over. Now you all know that just as soon as you put it all away someone comes in hungry. So, Aieysha made a second round for the leftovers.
About ten pm, I asked my hubby again what time did he want to go shopping. The stores open at 5 am and if you are not there by 4 am, you can pretty much forget getting something high on the list of wanted items. He said set the clock as I wanted and wake him in the morning. 3:30 am, and the house is quiet. I got up and dressed and went into the living room to wake my hubby. He was on the couch. He grumbled, no one had let him sleep all night and they had been up and down the stairs all night. OK, so sleep a bit more. At 4am, I walked into the living room again and sat down on the couch. After what seemed like an eternity he got up and dressed. We got into the car and headed for Best Buy. Laptops for 279.00$ a deal. We got close and I knew in my heart I needed to forget it. Thousands of cars were parked in the lot and the lines of people stretched til the main road. They even had cars parking in the Home Depot lot across the street. Hubby has a bad back so standing even 10 minutes would have made him a bear. So I turned around and headed home. Went inside and took off my clothes and crawled back into my still warm bed. At 9 am I woke again and after the kids woke up I decided to take a drive to the new shopping mall. Best Buy was out sorry. I headed to Ulta cosmetics and looked to see if they had my favorite perfume in a gift set. Sorry and the cheapest bottle was 26$. I looked at a beautiful makeup set and thought of my nieces in Libya how they may love a set like this one. It was 21$, and I could get a set of Hurricane lanterns as a free gift. Oooohhh tempting. But this was the only money I have had all week so I was not to spend it foolishly. I remembered seeing a World Import Market down the block and walked down the block with all but Suhayb in tow. He didn't want to go, he wanted to go home (sound familiar). The kids had stopped into the Pet store next door and had to show me all the birds. Yep their lovely but we have 5 so no thanks. It was a bit windy so we hurried down to the Market. Once inside I wandered around the store, browsing at this and that along the isle. OOhhh look at the Indian style jewelry! Look at the musical instruments from all over. Lets try the xylophone! Cool but the big one is 300$. Next time. Back to bedding, oh how I would love a room that looked like that! Beautiful bedding all nicely done. Yeah with five kids sure, on to the dishes. None that caught my eye. The herd was getting restless, Fatimah needed the bathroom no sooner than we walked in and the others were getting bored too. Why can a mother never have a few minutes to herself and her daydreams. Aieysha found a few stuffed animals that are magnetized and she wanted to buy a few. She had her money so ok. Fatimah was getting noisy so I told Suhayl to take her to the car. And Khadijah and I waited for Aieysha to finish her purchases.
Suhayb pulled up the car and we were ready to go. Fatimah had saved up 40$ and wanted a game so we had looked in one store and 30$ was high and we knew we could find a used one. So I dropped everyone off at the house, and Fatimah, Kahdijah and I headed to the game store near by. Yes, they had a used copy at 26$. So now she is excited and wants to leave. But wait mom wants to look at the movies. Hey a copy of "One flew over the cuckoos nest". A classic on my movie list for only 9.95$. I could also get Patriot and Titanic on DVD for 20$ for the three. Hum, in Libya I would have paid 5$ maybe, so no not today.
At home I had downloaded a program where you can see what a room looks like with different paint on the walls. The kitchen always looked good in grey but cover up my stencils? Nope not yet. The outside is what needs it the most. I had Suhayb go outside and take another picture of the house and bring it in and load it while I was gone. Now to play with the program. We tried on many colors until we came up with Storm cloud Grey for the doors, Camouflage green for the base and white for trim it looks nice, but we will wait for daddy to decide. So I saved the photos for later. I guess my day is more Grey than Blue.....I miss holidays with family...Next year maybe...