It is a year of lower expectations.

Every year, there is a chorus of folks urging us to lower our expectations for the holidays -- buy less, consume less, worry less about having a picture-perfect holiday, and spend more time reflecting on what the holiday means to us. This year, it seems, we will finally get a chance to do that.

I was recently asked what my childhood memories of the holidays were, and I had a couple of vivid ones.

I saw myself sitting on the wooden stairway of the farmhouse where my mother grew up. There were far too many people to sit at a table, too many to get any kind of chair, even after all the folding chairs were called into service and the couch filled to capacity.

The seating was distributed on a strict seniority basis and, as I was very young, all the cousins my age would line up and sit on the stairs leading to the second floor of the farmhouse, one above the other, with our plates on our laps.

This was a fine arrangement, except that the farmhouse had only one bathroom and this stairway led to it. The stairway was narrow and some of my relatives were not. And so, we would lean over as far as we could (still with our plates on our laps) to allow the elderly relatives to make their way up to the bathroom at the top of the stairs.

That is a good memory.

The year I turned 5, I had chicken pox at Christmas. I spoke to my mother recently about that year. “Oh! That was a miserable Christmas,” she said. And I’m sure, for her, it was. But my memory is not of the festivities I missed.

My mother stayed at home with me on Christmas Eve, and all I remember was the small Christmas tree my parents put in my bedroom. My memory is not of being terribly sick, but of seeing those shining Christmas lights every time I opened my eyes and feeling loved and special enough to have my very own tree.

That is another good memory.

I’ve been telling my husband, Peter, that we are making good memories now. Of course, Peter and I are not working in a hospital or trying to teach school or dealing with grumpy retail customers. We are at home all the time except for our once-every-other-week trip to the grocery store, which is beginning to feel more like an exotic adventure every time we do it.

We are seeing no one so we can continue to visit Lori, who continues to fight cancer, and Peter cooks something for her every week and I read a bit more from my book (although by this time I have finished the first book and am reading a new one) and I know we will remember this time.

We won’t have memories of a foreign landscape or a breathtaking performance or a fancy gathering. Instead, we’ll remember the excitement of hearing the doorbell ring and getting to chat with a neighbor on our front stoop. Our memories from this year will be of the same home-cooked meal, the same routine, the same clothes worn, the same neighbors greeted from across the lawn, the same dogs on my walk -- as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months. We will remember.

I might miss the excitement of a different kind of life. But I know I will remember the small, good things in this year of lower expectations.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

My friend Anita is felting up a storm.

Philip is cooking something new and posting a photo of it every day. Megan is reading Shakespeare on video, Jason is doing woodwork projects, Tom and Mary and Katie are sewing thousands of masks, and Peggy is studying Spanish, German and Latin -- all at once. Then there are the folks who are just trying to make it through the week, working jobs that demand more and more of them every day.

There is no right way to do this.

I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo -- which stands for “National Novel Writing Month” and is held every year in November. November is a month when I am usually much too busy traveling and visiting family to commit to writing 50,000 words in 30 days -- which is what NaNoWriMo is all about.

Except this year, I was not going anywhere. So, I thought, “Why not?”

There are a lot of good reasons why not, the biggest one being that, in order to “win,” a person needs to write 1,667 words seven days a week -- if they don’t take a day off on Thanksgiving. While 1,667 words may not be an impossible number of words to write in one day, it is a heck of a lot of words to write every day.

“Why are you making your life more stressful?” my husband, Peter, asked.

I knew he had a point. But I thought it would be fun because I figured, this year more than any other, there would be a lot of interesting people doing it. And I was right.

NaNoWriMo encourages writers to strike up friendships with the more than 300,000 participants. The “National” is not quite accurate; there are people writing from all over the world. Everyone I met online had a story -- how they were working from home, or their business was closed, or they were going to be doing something else that was canceled. There was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and encouragement and positive energy.

This year in particular, having this big goal gave a bit of structure to my life that seemed to be lacking. It provided a reason to stretch in a year where just getting by often feels like more than enough. It noted the passing of the days and gave me a badge for showing up and writing -- first one week, then another -- until I made it to the end.

Most importantly, it connected me to others. And right now, that is what I am missing more than anything. Encouraging a writer in England whose B&B is closed to get her words written, providing sympathy to a writer who is struggling with her novel while caring for her elderly mother, having a writer in Hawaii say he found my writing funny -- these were the connections that made this big, ridiculous goal worthwhile. These connections made the goal irrelevant.

Of course, not all the writers finished. Some got called back into work. Some simply became overwhelmed by day-to-day life. There is no right way to do NaNoWriMo either.

We all had an adventure. We did something that made a shrinking world feel a little bigger. We might even have written a few good words in there, somewhere.

In the end, I did write 50,000 words. I don’t know if I’ll ever participate in NaNoWriMo again; I’m writing most of the time anyway. But I’m glad I did it this year. When I hit 50,000 words, I had a reason to celebrate.

Right now, I think we’re all looking for reasons to celebrate.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

I have always loved Thanksgiving. I love that it is a holiday built around a full table and homemade treats. I love the recipes handed down on index cards that only get made once a year and traditions that bring back childhood memories and the chance to use linen napkins and the idea that sitting around a table -- just sitting around a table -- is reason enough to celebrate.

I think it might be my favorite holiday. I like that expectations are reasonably low and yet the holiday provides an opportunity for people who care about one another to get together.

Of course, things are different this year.

I’m told my extended family will have a “Zoom Thanksgiving,” and I’m trying to be more excited about that than I am. Thanksgiving will be, by necessity, a significantly pared-down affair this year. But I am still looking forward to it. My husband, Peter, and I will celebrate with his sister, Lori, and her husband, Robert. Lori has been fighting cancer all this year and last. We’ll be even more careful than usual so we can share this meal at opposite sides of a room with her. And, yes, we will be grateful.

Because we didn’t know if Lori would be alive to celebrate this holiday. But she will be there, eating turkey and breaking her dietary restrictions to have a piece of pie and a glass of wine, and I know there will be laughter and someone (probably Lori) will tell at least one rude joke and all of us, at our little gathering of four, will be more than usually grateful.

Cancer has been held at bay for another year. Yes, there have been deaths and losses, but there has also been a lot of laughter and some learning in this difficult year and (while it sounds cliché) a new appreciation for how important our relationships are.

My friend Marisa recently had a dream so powerful she felt compelled to share it on Facebook. She dreamed she had died and come back to life and was trying to tell everyone how special and amazing this was, how amazing life was, and no one would listen.

“Maybe you'll listen,” she wrote.

“Times are really rough, I know,” she continued, “and more so for some of us than for others. But this life is a gift full of little gifts. I hope you find some of them in your day today.”

Another friend told me he was suspicious of people like Marisa who were always looking for something to be happy about. If you had to “work to be happy,” it wasn’t “natural,” he said. He may be right.

But just as we’re able to extend Lori’s life or replace a broken hip or clean our teeth -- working at gratitude makes life a lot more pleasant, a lot more bearable, a lot more fun. If that’s unnatural, I’m in favor.

This Thanksgiving, Peter will make the stuffing his grandmother always made. I will make at least two kinds of pie, rolling pastry the way my mother taught me. Lori will get out her family china and silver -- although we won’t be using many place settings this year. Robert will set the table because he’s gotten good at that in these months of Lori’s illness, and Lori will probably ask us, as she has at Thanksgiving gatherings in the past, to share something we are thankful for.

And, in spite of everything, I don’t think any of us will have to work too hard to come up with something to say.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION