The day after Christmas...
the days that follow a frenzied holiday are different from other days that you might declare "lazy days". A chilly, rainy or snowy Sunday spent lolling around the house and sprawling on the sofa in front of football games is a lazy day. A summer Saturday spent sitting in the gardens, reading and sipping iced coffee and watching bees flitting around the blooms is a lazy day, but the day after a holiday is somehow more than that. I know there's a bit of decompression that happens, that mental and physical act of letting go of the accumulated stress and tensions and the dull feeling that happens the day after feasting and drinking and generally making merry, but somehow, even the light on a day like this seems lazy and hollow and sort of spins around inside Stately Sad Old Goth Manor, rather than streaming through the windows and bathing the floors and making you second guess you housekeeping skills by illuminating the little, swirling dust motes in the air... Maybe it too is the pervasive quiet of the post-holiday day, the bustle and noise of it all is over, the rooms and halls are done echoing the music and the laughter and the sounds of cooking and feasting and cleaning up, all the coming and going, and the walls now are quiet, save the occasional creek of groan, the house itself even now starting to relax. One thing I've noticed over the years, which is an odd phenomenon of this grim old pile we call home, is that the more people that come inside and the merrier they are, the larger this place seems. I've been to houses much large than ours for holiday parties and other celebrations and it seems that as people arrive and join the fray, the place seems to get tighter and smaller to the point where you feel you need to stake a claim to a spot in a room and stay there, because once you move from it, it might disappear all together, but never does our old Manor feel that way. It seems to expand and swell to accommodate all the souls inside and at times seems to enjoy it all as much as we mere mortals do, laughing right along with us at stories and jokes, dancing away the night with us to the music and smiling at all the merriment within it's old walls. It never seems crowded or claustrophobic or full. Sure, sometimes when we're going at it hammer and tongs, you need to weave yourself through people standing the dining room or kitchen or parlor or the upstairs hall like a needle guided through a torn warp and weft at the hand of a skilled seamstress, balancing drink in one hand and saving the other for shoulder patting, back rubbing and other socially acceptable contact between friends, but is really a guise for keeping your balance as you pirouette and waltz around, between and through conversations, secrets, jokes and tall tales...
Maybe a day like this feels extra lazy because not only we're recovering from it all, but our home is as well. Maybe that's one of the secrets of this old hall, all the parties and celebrations and holidays it's been a part of, all the joy and noise and laughter these old walls and beams and rafters have absorbed, maybe this place really does grow a bit at times like that, swelling and feeling comfortable like we all do with much of feasting and drinking and love, then feeling a bit ill-used and over done the day after and shrinking back to it's normal size, perhaps even compressing a little bit, or at least so it seems...
Well, what ever it is, today is one of the those lazy days, humans and cat and house itself all coming back to ground, recovering, maybe even regretting, just a little, the return to "normal life"... and so, with that, I take my leave to drive our oldest daughter back home. Maybe the ride will do me some good and hurry putting things back into perspective. I think, on the way home, I'll take the long, scenic route...
Later.



wander with me...