It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like...

Facebook is a funny beast. Besides being responsible for about 2/3 of my thesis procrastination, and the only reason I know which of my friends are currently getting married and/or procreating (not to mention what they ate for dinner, how many final exams they have left, or just how annoying this "effing rainstorm" is), Facebook is the main reason that I have not forgotten what time of year it is. Every time I open the computer, I'm met with a slew of Christmas photos: lights, gingerbread, pretty people in pretty clothes, and--depending on the location--pretty people in pretty clothes looking like they wish Mom would just take the damn picture and let them get out of the snow. It's wonderful, really. Here I am, thousands of miles away from home, and I still know that Elena baked pecan cookies. Pretty soon, I'll find out just how many people got engaged on Christmas day, which of my procreating cousins received adorable, crocheted beanies from my Grandma, and probably see photos of at least a dozen dinner plates--until New Year's comes around, and I'll know who is fiddling with their iphone instead of watching the ball drop. Like I said, it's a funny beast.

Without it, I might very well have stayed in my bubble of perpetual summer. After all, in Bali, it's a good day when you don't sweat through three t-shirts--regardless of the month--and given that this is the first year in nearly twenty that I have not gone back to school, my brain still thinks it's August. When my mom asked me if Ubud was decorated for the holidays, I had to think about it. "There's a silvery Christmas tree in Coco's Supermarket," I told her. "And I think I saw a guy wearing a Santa hat at Puriartha." She laughed, but I could tell she thought it was a little pathetic. It was the same half-laugh that my grandma did when I called her on Thanksgiving, and she asked if I was "AT LEAST EATING TURKEY?" If by 'turkey' she meant oatmeal with spirulina and bee pollen, then yes. Yes, I was.

To be honest, even I'm a little surprised by my nonchalance. I've never been one to get overly hot and bothered about the holidays, save for the occasional Halloween (I believe we're all still recovering from my 'Phantom of the Opera' years) or Patty's Day in Galway; and sure, I love Thanksgiving because it's about being grateful, and I'll wear bunny ears for any holiday that involves copious amounts of chocolate. But there's something special about Christmas: no matter how hard Hallmark tries to ruin it, an undeniable glow surrounds the latter half of December, and I've always felt it. My Nana probably would have attributed it to little girls in their new holiday dresses, or the smell of the air when it hits frozen ground. In Santa Barbara, there's not a whole lot of frozen ground to hit; however, there's still the twinkle of State Street when it's covered in lights, and the feeling of sliding down the hallway in thick, wooly socks when you're moments away from seeing what Christmas morning has done to your living room. That, and Aunt Carolyn's infamous heart-attack-in-a-bowl snow crunch. Hardly a season has gone by where I haven't eaten that damn snow crunch to the point of near puke-dom, and likewise, not a year has gone by that I haven't thoroughly enjoyed it.

So here I am, in Bali, far removed from the buzz of the Christmas and the contact high that comes from watching others bustle around in the holiday spirit. This time last year, I was up all night making industrial-sized batches of vegan granola, dancing to Vince Guaraldi on Pandora and ensuring that everyone around me would sooner die than listen to me sing "Feliz Navidad" again. This year, I am sleeping on a couch in Ubud, waking each morning to fresh papaya and rambutan, running Olivia around a muddy soccer field and spending my free time pummeling through the streets on the back of my friend Orin's motorbike. That's not to say that I've been entirely spared from festivities... just last week, I attended a real live Christmas party. After spending a solid hour shopping for new shoes, only to realize that it was Bali and that I would be removing them before entering the house, I spent another 3 hours debating what to bring for the gift exchange. What does one bring to an expatriate Christmas party in Bali, at the home of a woman that looks like she could bench-press a linebacker and still have flawless makeup, where the Christmas tree is 8-feet-tall and covered with sacred Hindu relics? The answer: a live pig and two ducks.

Okay, so that's not what I brought. I brought my favorite David Sedaris and a bottle of Balinese honey, wrapped in newspaper hand-painted by Olivia. It is, however, exactly what Orin brought. Nestled underneath the Christmas tree, in between carefully wrapped trinkets and gift certificates, there they were: two identical banana-leaf baskets, complete with tailfeathers, and a somewhat cumbersome, white box. With air holes. "Those ones have to stay together," he said, nodding at the ducks. Quack. As for the pig... well, it was all fun and games until the pig peed. "My gift is... wet," someone said, pointing to the box. And believe me, we were laughing so hard it was a miracle we didn't all pee our boxes.

When people ask me about Christmas, and if I miss anything from home, my answer is always the same: I miss my family. To me, Christmas is family. It's not Kenny Loggins on K-LITE 101.7 or those stupid red cups from Starbucks, although in my absence, even those have taken on a certain rose-colored glow. That's the funny thing about being away from home; suddenly, the events and people of life 'before' take on a mystical quality of exaggeration. Someone who was a pain-in-the ass swells into an archetypal villain, and relationships that simply fizzled and died become tragic heartbreak for the sake of telling stories to new acquaintances. Good and bad, the brain seeks organization, and it does so by creating extremes. It's kind of like leaving college--in retrospect, the crappy, dead tree that you passed a thousand times on route to your crappy, deadening seminar becomes that tree I passed every day on my way to class! Oh, college. Even the quiet zone of the library, Satan's eyeball itself, takes on an air of romance when viewed through the sentimentality that distance creates. So there you have it: on more than one occasion, I've found myself missing K-LITE. But far more frequently than that, I've missed the people who've known me since I was too young to know myself, the ones who made hot cocoa and took me to see the live animals at the Mission on Christmas Eve. What I don't miss, however, is the consumerism that this time of year brings--the fierce need to buy things, and the strung-out quality that people's voices get when you ask them about the holidays. "Oh you know, just GETTING BY." That kind of thing. The cover of magazines advertising ways to rapidly gain and then rapidly lose those holiday pounds--all from the comfort of your brand new cashmere sweater, in front of your widescreen plasma TV! Now tell me, Charlie Brown, is that what Christmas is all about?

The answer is no. If I didn't know that before, I know it now. I miss my family and the sweetness that this time of year brings, but even more frighteningly wonderful is the fact that I feel like I've found a family and a life here in Bali. Since coming back to Ubud, Olivia has been in school--leaving me with most days free to bike into town, weaving in and out of traffic with the type of blind confidence that only 4 years in L.A. could have given me, or sitting and dreaming for long periods of time. The rains have started kicking in, which means that at least once every day the sky breaks into pieces and unleashes a sheet of thick water. I'm not talking the kind of rain that makes Santa Barbarians put on their designer boots and refuse to drive on the Westside: this is RAIN. Immobilizing, wild, beautiful rain. I felt it coming on the other day, biked home like a maniac, and made it home just in time for the first crack of thunder. Mind you, we live in an open-air house, which means walls are few and far between... so when the rain comes in horizontally, there is little to do but sit and watch the wetness happen. I for one have taken to making myself a cup of spicy, sweet Good Earth tea, curling into the beanbag, and listening. There is so, so much to listen to here. Everywhere you turn, it's alive.

So here's the big question: what happens on Christmas day, when I'm alone? When I don't have the people or the sights and sounds that define this type of year? I'm not psychic, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be absolutely fine. I won't go as far as to say it's like any other day, because it isn't. I remember the Christmas morning I got the Barbie camper van, and my dad spent 6 hours putting miniature hot-dog forks into miniature picnic baskets. (If the aforementioned Phantom of the Opera costume didn't guarantee his entrance into heaven, the Barbie van certainly does.) I remember the moments right before the Nutcracker curtain rose, and how my heart swelled with the music. I remember what cozy feels like... but the thing is, I feel it. Here. Cozy is where you bring it, and how many blankets you decide to stock inside your heart. Lately, for me, cozy has been an increased understanding of how delicate everything is--how very lucky I am that, even though you are all far away, I have a family that sends me a Christmas card. You all exist, you continue to grow and to multiply... and right now, that knowledge is enough for me. As a matter of fact, it fills me from the inside out.

Christmas is coming, the geese (er... ducks) are getting fat, and I've been thinking a lot about home. The other day, my grandma told me to "think about coming back to Santa Barbara. Just think about it." The same day, I got two emails that told me to stay in Bali as long as I possibly can. So here's a Christmas riddle for you: which one is home? That's the question. That's the one I can't quite figure out. To be honest, though, I think the answer is... C. All of the above.

Elena Brower says that we're always either running away from something or running toward it. This was a revelation. Before I came here, I'd gotten so used to running away that I could no longer recall what I was trying to escape-- I was suspended in midair, kicking up a cloud of dust like roadrunner MEEP MEEPing at Wiley Coyote. I was stuck. And now? All I know is that it feels like I'm running toward something. I'm moving, but at the same time, I feel stillness; there is chaos in my body, but calm in my soul. As Ms. Brower suggests, in the midst of all this running, our hearts remain steadfast. They're always there, pounding our chests when the motorbike hits a certain speed, marking time and beginnings and the guttural rush of new love.

And if that's not what Christmas is about, Charlie Brown, I don't know what is.

Now if I could only find some snow crunch...