Stuffed

I like to wait until it starts to spill out. Uncontrolled, untethered.

“I like stuffing, and I like pulling out,” he says over my shoulder as I type, as if I’m not a wee little stenographer.

He’s talking about the draw string of his pants and the process of dealing with a string that is partially pulled into the hole, and the process of pulling it back out. He asked if it annoys me when it happens. I say no, I like the little puzzle and challenge, but also yes, it’s super annoying.

He’s lifting weights in the backyard now, as I let the words, finally, pour out of the tips of me.

The stockings are hung, the shopping is done, food is ready to be prepped for back-to-back family dinners, packages mailed, and I just keep thinking, “Why do I do all this?” I overfill my house with presents, my bank account running low, my energy spent too, and yet, this deep, resounding satisfaction settles in as I acknowledge how much work I’ve put into this holiday and how wonderful it’s going to be. How wonderful it has already been.

The joy of bringing my loved ones into my home, of sharing what I’ve collected and made with those I love.

Yesterday we decorated gingerbread houses with one of my best friends and her ex and their kids, my boyfriend was here, and my ex too. I felt this expansive love abound and sat in wonder at the way having children has made all of our hearts grow.

My guitar teacher came by for my lesson on Saturday evening. He was all humbug and grump. I told him about the way that having kids really brought my own childhood excitement around Christmas back, and how, suddenly, I felt that magic again. He said, “Yeah, it’s just annoying cuz I don’t get paid for two weeks and so I could rest, but like my parents miss me… and there are so many people to see and I just want to relax.”

And I know he’s not alone. It’s the solstice, or was yesterday, and the energy is low, the vibration slow and steady. People don’t understand why they can’t rest when every cell in their body is telling them to. My friend Katie and I got sick at the same time. Bad cold. We both canceled classes, stayed home, rested, and then, as Katie said, “I could feel the capitalism in my veins start to rise back up!” and boom, we were back at it.

The capitalism is our own survival, at least for me. I’m reading Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, and in the passage I read this morning, they discussed a group of Italians in Pennsylvania in the 1960s who had astonishingly low rates of heart disease. The sociologist began to study them to know what it was that was keeping them so damned healthy. As they studied them and carefully excluded factors such as exercise, diet, regional variables like pollution etc, they concluded that the major factor keeping folks in this town healthier longer was the nature of the community itself. In this Italian community, everyone shared, housing was multigenerational, and there was community disdain for any display of wealth. Such ostentatiousness, they believed, would bring them bad luck. This stemmed from the ancient belief among Italian villagers relating to the maloccio (the evil eye).

The authors go on to say that, “In foragers, where property is shared, poverty tends to be a nonissue.” And they go on to quote Marshall Sahlins: “Poverty… is the invention of civilization.” Explaining that many of the most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. And Socrates, he points out, said 2,400 years ago: “He is richest who is content with least, for contentment is the wealth of nature.”

And so maybe I’ll give my kids a single pinecone and a golden paint. Maybe I’ll invite them to ponder and outline every edge of the cone and to revel in nature’s ingenious design.

Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha go on to explain the ways in which colonists throughout time visited “poor” and “savage” people and came home detailing the depravity of their lifestyles. They retell an attempt by British sailors to help a group of people from Tierra del Fuego to join the civilized world. The same ship on which Darwin was sailing took three of these Feugians to Britain, and taught them their ways, and then returned them home to serve as missionaries to show the rest of their people how to be civilized. A year later, the sailors checked in on their progress and noticed the native people had abandoned everything they had attempted to create for them, and refused to return to England, stating that here they were “happy and contented” with “plenty fruits, plenty fish, and plenty birdies.”

And in a home with plenty, why then, do I shop and gather, collect and send?

This is the least amount of money I’ve had in a while and it changes the way I see Christmas. I see the hundreds of lights on the big houses and I think, “Wow, they must feel really good about their electrical bill and their ability to pay it.” And I too can pay my bills with the help of others. I too can eat and feed my kids, with the help of my government.

And I think still, that maybe we are all still foragers, still nomadic and egalitarian at heart, trapped within these boxes and lines, just waiting for someone to burn down all the fences, distribute the fruits and fish evenly, so we can all lay back in the grass, feel the sun on our faces, the cold chill on our skin, and watch in aw as a gull glides freely in the blue sky above.

Plenty of fruit. Plenty of fish. Plenty of birdies.

Merry Christmas and love a plenty.

Amy