Doing Christmas

With the help of one of my favorite food writers I've figured out what to make for friends-and-neighbors treats this year. Homemade smores parts:

• Homemade graham crackers
• Homemade marshmallows
• Chocolate bark (some studded with bits of dried cherry, and some with bacon)
  

Another joy of being on sabbatic is being able to really do Christmas. J is a real peach for holidays; being with him has really reinvigorated (reanimated?) Halloween, for instance:




And I've always dug Christmas, but he's made Christmas a lot more fun too. So being able to do more for Christmas -- instead of furiously grading and dealing with plagiarists and other screwballs right up until Christmas eve -- is especially sweet.

Class privilege

Few things make me realize how fortunate I am as vividly as going grocery shopping. I had DJ with me last Friday. We drove over (though it's only a little over a mile away). DJ is still charmingly fascinated by all the goings on in the supermarket; I may not bring him so often when he isn't dazzled into tranquility.

I frequently imagine trying to make that trip as a single parent after a long day at work, with multiple would-up kids in tow, dangerously close to dinnertime, nervously adding up the cost of my items. Then I imagine doing all that by bus or on foot, which also means making the trip a lot more often. It's exhausting to think about.

I grew up in a rural working class family and spent all my higher-ed years surrounded by people who had money. As an undergrad, I didn't know any other students who worked as many hours as I did, and as a grad student I only knew one other who, like me, was actually living on her grad student stipend. It just became natural to me that I just couldn't do what, seemingly, everyone else did, like party and live in apartments without roommates. And I never expected that to change.

I got my first one-year salaried gig eight years ago, followed by the tenure-track one I have now, and it is still astounding to me how easy I have it; salaried, partnered, housed, insured. The single working-class mom of my imagination obviously adores her kids just as much as I do mine; I'm just perpetually struck by how few genuine stressors I have to face, compared to her, and how easy that makes it to just enjoy my family every day. That's the real privilege of class.

I did a lot to help myself get to this point, and I benefit from having a genuine dislike of shopping (yay!), but plenty of other people have worked just as hard as I have but haven't had the same privileges and lucky breaks. I could just as easily be living a life where I'm bone-tired at the end of every day, making the huge effort to have a couple reasonably pleasant evening hours before packing the kids off to bed and then fretting over how to pay for the brake job I need. Multiple times a day, every day, I'm just awed to be where I am.

Though, I'll probably have to make a special effort to remember this when I'm no longer on sabbatic, working four six-hour days a week from home.