I'm dreading the holiday on Monday. I don't have anything against Memorial Day. As holidays go, it's one of the best: nothing to buy, no obligatory decorations or meals or activities to march everybody through. The problem is I hate all holidays. Yes, even Christmas. Ugh, especially Halloween.
I hate, first of all, feeling like if I don't want to do something completely different from what I ordinarily do, I'm some kind of freak. I like what I ordinarily do. What I ordinarily do is exactly what I want.
"Of course you don't like holidays," my 13-year-old says. "Your job is sitting around at home daydreaming and writing down your daydreams. Why would you want a break from that?"
True! On holidays, my husband and family is around all day long, severely cutting into my daydreaming time. If I try to sneak away to my computer, they accuse me of being antisocial, a workaholic, someone who doesn't know how to let go and have fun.
And fun is... sitting on the hot pavement at the block party with the neighbors I usually try to avoid, talking about their kids' summer plans? Going to jamborees where my choices are to stick to my diet and drink only club soda and eat only carrots and feel like blowing my brains out, or gulp martinis and shovel red velvet cake down my throat and feel like blowing my brains out?
Oooops, getting a little negative here. I guess I would like holidays if I was a billionaire and could fly on my own private jet to my own deserted island and take a break from whatever people do to make billions of dollars by lying on my own gorgeous beach and reading for three straight days. That I could get behind. I could dig going to Paris for Memorial Day, Capri for the Fourth of July, and for Thanksgiving, somewhere like India or Morocco, where they never heard of roast turkey.
As it is, holidays can be divided into the boring -- Memorial Day, Labor Day -- or the ones that are too much work -- Christmas, Thanksgiving. The boring ones we could just as well commemorate without a day off. And the other ones I could live without.
Holidays happening by magic might be acceptable. Also, holidays that had been cherry-picked to contain all of their good and none of their bad aspects: birthdays with gifts but not aging, New Year's with champagne but not regret. Cherry-picked holidays happening by magic and lasting an hour or two before everybody got back to work and especially school, leaving me alone with my daydreams.