I loved this sweater from the moment I laid eyes on it. It is a vintage letterman sweater from Central High School in Detroit. It is red, double thread wool with buttons likely made of bone, and it is in surprisingly good shape considering it is from 1948. That’s right. My sweater turned 70 this year, and is still trotting around, jaunty and attention-getting, all the way across the country from where it started.
On one of the pockets, it has the graduation year – 1948. On the other pocket, it has the name of the lady who earned and wore it: Delphine Gieracki. Each time I wear it, I think of her and what she was like. When I think of High School, I think and hope it was a very happy time for her. But I know that it may not have been. High School can be hard. It can hold heart break and disappointment as much or more than any other four-year span of our lives.
I think too of what 1948 means. It was post war, so Detroit was on its way to an epic and unprecedented boom. But everyone was on the mend, too. Delphine was born as the Great Depression was raging and grew up during the uncertainty of the war years. She was probably 9 or 10 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. I am sure that some of her friends lost their dads and uncles in the war. It is likely that they lived through the lean years of rationing and black-outs, listening to fireside chats and hoping for an end to war.
My mom got the sweater at an estate sale, possibly Delphine’s. I’m pretty sure she’s no longer with us. But each time I put on that sweater, I am connected to history and place and there is a thread stretching through time to the first time Delphine put that sweater on, having earned it for her performance (I think for cheer leading). I imagine she felt tremendous pride in it. I hope she slept in it the first night it came home, or at least hung it on a hanger before her bed so it would be the first thing she saw when waking.
The thing is, that I think Christmas–or whatever your holiday may be–is a lot like high school.
Bear with me here. Holidays, like high school, are coming whether you want them or not. They are fun, but also stressful. They are highly memorable, due to their unique nature in contrast to the other months of our year, and while they hold some of the high points of our lives, they can be very complex and embedded with difficult memories, too. All holidays don’t go the way we would like them to go. All relationships don’t continue through the years. Losses sustained around the holidays continue to sting in ways that feel particularly poignant, as the rest of the world revels and sings and opens presents, blissfully unaware.
Like our time in high school, the holiday season can heighten our feelings of loneliness or connection. We may be more inclined to compare ourselves to other families or groups of friends than we would be on October 2, for example. Or sometime in June. And at the end of this accelerated four-year course, as we approach the graduation that is the New Year, we see it as a launching place to make the next phase in our lives different…even if the next year ends pretty much in the same place as it started.
We all can’t wear Delphine’s varsity sweater, but I hope this holiday season holds all that it can hold for you–joyous, difficult, stressful, fun. I hope you don’t hold yourself in judgment if you aren’t sprinkling peppermint dust and dancing on an egg nog cloud of excitement every minute. I hope that you revel in the moments of connection, and acknowledge that they are so special precisely because they don’t happen all the time. I hope you have a lot of opportunities to get
(and give) good hugs, laugh easily, and cry when you need to. If the holidays are a difficult time for you, chin up. Unlike the four tortuous years of high school, they’ll end in a few short weeks. If they are the best time of your year, do not fret. Like high school, I promise they are not the high point of your life or year. There is more to celebrate and do and to look forward to.
The gift we can each give to ourselves is the gift of ease. The cookies don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to go to every social event, and if certain gifts don’t come in time, it’ll be something to look forward to in the New Year. Some traditions don’t serve us anymore. Give yourself permission to let them go. Be flexible and maybe adopt/create new ones. Every tradition was new once. Be kind to yourself. To each of you reading this, I hope this holiday, whatever it looks like, will be exactly what you need it to be.