Friday, November 14, 2008

The Mall

I started another post about my trip to the mall this morning but it started to sound like an old person's rant and I was afraid I'd have to stop in the middle and shake my walker at those pesky kids and yell at them to "get off my lawn."

Let me begin by saying, we very rarely go to the mall. If we do go, we do a surgical strike. We make a beeline for the one store we need to patronize, find what we need and get the hell out of there. Today was a mission to Williams Sonoma to procure brining spices for my turkey. They put together a nice mix and it saves me the trouble of running around trying to find juniper berries and star anise when I only need them once a year.

I had forgotten how shiny everything is at the mall. I kind of squinted at all the "sparkliness" (if this is not a word – it should be) like perhaps I'd been hiding out in a cave for the last week. And the smells, when did the mall become such an intensely perfumed place? Perimenopause has blessed me with a very strong sense of smell (kind of like when you're pregnant and you can't be in the same room with a open jar of peanut butter) and the smells in the mall nearly did me in.

I was in and out in fourteen minutes flat – and that included a minute or two of fondling fancy cookware.

We make a different kind of trip to the mall near Christmas, sometimes on Christmas Eve (gasp). This is when The Kid picks out his traditional gift for us, pajamas. We do a little more window shopping and let ourselves get caught up in that whole, breath-holding-anticipation feeling of the final day before Christmas. Lefty gets a cup of fancy coffee and The Kid gets a bag of fancy candy and we walk through and soak up that weird consumer holiday vibe for a little while. Then we come home and have a nap.

I want to have a simpler, less stressful Christmas this year but we'll probably keep that last minute mall trip tradition. It's a part of who we are as a family and essential in some strange kind of way to how we see ourselves as a family: the three of us moving through the crowds, holding hand and laughing – looking forward to what comes next.

7 comments:

  1. I think that sounds like a very nice tradition. My dear husband is sometimes still shopping on Christmas Eve, UGH, and one of the most depressing experiences of my life was working in an Crate and Barrel right up until closing on Christmas Eve; the desperation and stress were not pleaant.

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  2. Hi VM!
    We go early in the day before the sales clerks get surly and the shoppers turn desperate. We're finished and home by lunch.

    I've had to work holidays in the past. I remember the palpable desperation that hangs in the air.

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  3. I go to the mall once a year--to buy a certain brand of bras.

    But your Christmas Eve trip sounds so sweet.

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  4. Wow. Mall avoiders. Me, too!

    The Christmas Eve mall walk sounds ... Christmas-y. :)

    I worked in a mall jewelry store while in college. I kind of liked the rush of the last shoppers that came in. The day went really fast, 'cause it was crazy-busy, and then we had people BEGGING to buy something thru the gate (you know those metal mall-gates) after we closed. Sometimes my boss would sell them a watch or something through the gate, and it was sweet and funny. :)

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  5. Wow. Mall avoiders. Me, too!

    The Christmas Eve mall walk sounds ... Christmas-y. :)

    I worked in a mall jewelry store while in college. I kind of liked the rush of the last shoppers that came in. The day went really fast, 'cause it was crazy-busy, and then we had people BEGGING to buy something thru the gate (you know those metal mall-gates) after we closed. Sometimes my boss would sell them a watch or something through the gate, and it was sweet and funny. :)

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  6. Oh, I am SO with you on malls. I just HATE them. And, I'm married to a realtor, so the whole idea of Christmas shopping is, well, alarming. Frightening? Terrifying.

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  7. I didn't comment on this? I clearly remember reading it and thinking of a comment...hmmm...did the brain take a vacation and not tell me?!

    As a fellow mall avoider, I like how you do things! And I especially like your tradition--it seems loving and comforting, in spite of taking place in a mall--I guess it's all in the attitude!

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