So what does Christmas in New York City look like exactly?
Well, when you're away from home, largely dependent when you're not used to so being, submerged in a completely different culture than your own, it looks like excitement and loneliness wrestling for top rank.
It means classmates and people asking you "So what do you miss about Christmas at home?" and you opening your mouth to tell them but not being able to put it to words in a way they could relate to just then. Understanding in that moment as you feel the absence that Christmas at home is sensational. It is the smell of cakes in homes and shops. It is people in the market desperately searching for sorrel. It is stores all lit up and more people in the city than usual, speeding along, looking and looking and planning for feasts with friends and family. It is eggs gone scares and upped in price It is stepping into a bus and sighing as you exclaim 'prang already!?" but singing along before you know it. It is Christmas music over the radio system of your favorite grocery store.
It looks like sitting back and realizing that you are an adult who has spent the last decade establishing traditions and happy habits that are now across the ocean. It means missing watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or Home Alone for the gazillionth time with your mom as you eat lunch at dinner time because you did more laughing than cooking in the kitchen that day.
It means missing your big brother's laughter as he comes barreling down the steps of your home with sweet cakes, yelling Merry Christmas over excitedly.
It means not running into friends you haven't seen all year, on the streets or more importantly, in the grocery store, bonding over the exorbitant prices of turkey hams.
It means missing your dog and your cactus plant and your miniature Christmas tree and the bedding, pillows and lights you got yourself, with money you worked for that you put up just once a year to decorate your room. Decorations that you'd been so proud of putting together in a space that is yours.
And it means doing this alone, in the dark. Not telling anyone because you understand that you also have religious affiliation with this holiday and you're in a country where they'd rather you keep your beliefs to yourself thank you very much.
It also means your friends will go out with you on eve of eve and see the city of New York fantastically alight.
It means eggnog for the first time.
It means red, green and Christmas lights used and appreciated in a new way.
It means Christmas dinner with an aunt you spent a large part of your teen years missing. Laughing with her and eating cranberry sauce with turkey.
It means the extra ordinary kindness of strangers. Like a sweet new friend buying you a Rudolph plushie to keep you company while you miss your mom. Your friend giving you a journal to remind you that this too is part of your story and you've got to write it down. Live it in the moment and appreciate the moment because this moment too will end.
It means being homesick for your best friends and telling them and feeling connected to them even from far away because the solid true friendships you built cannot be shaken by space. It means Caribbean new friends giving you warm bottie socks because they thought of you and how you would struggle through your first Winter because they know that struggle well. It means your Puerto Rican friend sharing his cultural, home made drink with you after telling you about it for years! It means...so much.
It is a melancholia...knowing that no backwards step will ever fill this spacing where something is newly missing and no forward step will ever compare. It is understanding and accepting that they don't have to do that that they don't need the weight of that responsibility. It is coming to grips with the fact that change is okay even though it is bitter and sweet both.
Christmas, away from home, has the ability to make you cherish your intangible national treasures.
Peace. Love. Appreciations.
