Editor’s Notebook

Danette Goulet

When I was a child, holidays meant no school, my mother’s stuffing,

homemade pies, playing board games with my brother and four sisters and,

at Christmas, the deep and superficial joys of giving and receiving tons

of presents.

Ah, the good old days. Where did that simple bliss go?

These days, Thanksgiving usually means working although this year I’m

off and will celebrate the day by cooking for a trio of otherwise

helpless men.

Christmas is an expensive, tense time of flying cross-country bogged

down with countless bags filled with gifts for nieces and nephews, while

still needing to make it to another store for that one more thing before

the visit to family for a time that is always too short.

And yet, I love the holidays.

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving. There will be no traveling

involved, I don’t have to work, I have a small stack of board games

ready to go and I plan to gorge myself on my mother’s secret recipe

stuffing, which I will make.

Plus, no one will try to make me eat those horrible, orange sweet

potatoes because they will be absent from my feast.

Christmas is a different story.

The Christmas saga has begun already. In place of that excited

anticipation of youth, the build up to Christmas now is one of anxiety

and stress. Going online day after day to find a flight on Christmas eve

at an affordable rate, which in my gut I know will never happen.

I’ve begun talking to my mom with increasing frequency, as she calls

to see how the search is coming. All the while she says “just see what

you can do,” which means hurry up and find a ticket because I will be

very disappointed if you don’t make it, like that one year we don’t talk

about.

I’ll probably end up on a red eye flight to Boston Christmas eve, and

then be forced to take a bus out of the city to a station closer to my

parents house.

But, you know what? Once the nightmare journey is over, and I walk

into the house, which will smell like cooling pumpkin pie and that

stuffing cooking in the oven while being attacked by my adorable and

adoring nieces and nephews, I’ll remember exactly why I love the

holidays.

* DANETTE GOULET is the assistant city editor. She can be reached at

(714) 965-7170 or by e-mail at o7 danette.goulet@latimes.comf7 .