Normalcy returns to the calendar

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

I wanted it to last a little longer. Not the hoopla that was the holiday but the lazy aftermath - the kids home, the tree still up, all the beds filled, shoes on the floor, coats on the backs of chairs. There was grilled cheese every day, take-out every night, Christmas cookies still in tins, cocoa, fudge, and no thought of a diet. There was also no no timetable, no agenda, no place you HADto be.

We watched movies - "28 Days," "Affliction," "The General's Daughter."

We piled on the couch every night at 9 or 10, it didn't matter because there was no need to get up before dawn. We slept in. We woke at 8 or 9 and ate pancakes and waffles. Friends stopped by, old friends, new friends, the kids' friends. And it felt like a vacation, not just a few days at home, the world with all its problems, distanced, at least for the moment, by laughter and "remember whens" and the simple joy of being together.

The space between Christmas and New Year's is a swath of days cut from a different cloth. All the days that precede Christmas are frantic and full, too busy and chaotic to remember, let alone enjoy.

And all the days that follow New Year's are staid and no-nonsense, squares on a calendar, full of appointments and resolutions and things to be done and contacts to be made.

But the days connecting the two? They stand alone, footbridge days, neither here nor there. These are days when it's OK to have pine needles on the floor and dog hair on the rug and boxes full of things in the living room and people coming and going and eating and sleeping all at different hours.

These are days when it's OK just to be.

We come into them in overdrive. And we come out of them in overdrive. But in the space between slowing down and starting up again, in the company of family and friends, despite all the bad that continues to happen just outside our walls, it is possible to sit back and relax and savor the good.

I hadn't watched a movie since the summer. It takes too long. I always think I should be doing something else. But as I sat on the couch last week, with my husband and my kids and my cousin and her kids, I thought about how every Saturday when I was a child, my best friend Rose I would walk to the Randolph Theater and watch a double feature - two full-length movies plus previews and cartoons. In the winter we'd go in in daylight and come out in the dark. An entire afternoon spent and gone and never once did we say, "That was a waste of time." Because the concept didn't exist. Because time was a limitless currency that we spent with abandon.

Now, the two of us, who used to envy the movie stars who had projection screens in their homes and could watch any movie, anytime they wanted, ("Wouldn't that be great?" we said.) have VCRs and DVDs. But we never watch movies. Why? Because it's a waste of time, we say. Because we see the clock ticking. Because we always have other things to do.

That was the beauty of last week. For a few days it was OK to not do the other things. It was OK to sit on the couch and not even notice the clock.

Saturday's predicted snowstorm would have been the perfect ending. We shored up, hunkered down and waited for the world to stop.

But the snow turned into rain in my town. And the kids went home and the tree came down. And I spent Sunday cleaning out the refrigerator, searching for the perfect calendar and reading the newspapers.

You can't keep the world at bay forever. You can't watch movies and ignore real life and sleep in and eat pizza all the time - not if you're over 14.

But it was nice while it lasted.