This Thanksgiving I went home to Mississippi.  It was warmer, slower and, if you don't count my mother's constant joyful shrieking, quieter there.  I hadn't been home for a holiday since long before my vegetarian period (1998-2008), and it was for the best.  Mama doesn't serve Tofurkey.  Here are the week's themes, in short.

1)When in Rome.  In the spirit of family, I was obliged to observe traditional customs.  Up with the sun, coffee on, breakfast out to the men who are doing something involving chain saws and a truck.  A photo exists of me in a denim shirt squinting into the scope of a rifle, but I promise it was just a BB gun.  The plastic coke bottle at risk remains unscathed.

2)Everyone has a mantra.  An old friend taught me long ago that at times of familial intersection, like holidays, funerals and weddings, family members effortlessly adopt a mantra to get them through the hours.  "Just look at that baby."  "I can't believe they sent the wrong flowers."  "Bless her heart."  These phrases are a way of grounding, creating an anchor point from which to observe and experience the whirlwind that is family.  We can find out a lot about a person based on their chosen mantra, and can do ourselves good by selecting one carefully.  Some mantras are initiated by the event itself, and sustained for its duration, sometimes becoming long-term mantras.  "Karen done been gone so long she forgot the way home and come up Jeannie's driveway!"  In such cases, the same mantra can be used for decades "Oh Karen, I'll neva forgit the time you ate that big giant helpin a' bubblegum ice cream when we was shoppin and the discount mall, and thowed the whole thing up in a para shoes in the back seat!"  (short version: "Oh, that bubblegum ice cream!")

3)Forgetting the way home.  It isn't true, what they say, that you never forget the way home.  Sometimes you are in the car at night in the middle of the sticks with no streetlights and no road signs, doing your best not to end up in a $%&ing ditch, and you make a mistake and come up Jeannie's driveway.  If this happens to you, do not worry that you've severed your connection to your roots.  You've in fact made them stronger, because the people waiting for you at the top of the correct driveway, who didn't see but actually heard your mistake with their disturbingly accurate country sonar ears, will always have something to say when they see you.  For the rest of your life.

4)Hand-me-downs.  I did acquire a few heirlooms while at my Grandmother's house.  Grannygreat's cookie jar, the afghan Granny Penney made for my mom when she went to college, and a ring with a blue stone that Penney's first husband gave her.  The rest of the stuff is junk.  Piles and boxes and baskets of junk that gets gifted, re-gifted, thrifted and re-thrifted.  One set of decorative framed virtues actually has provenance which traces back 4 acquisitions: grandmother purchased for mother, who gave it to the Goodwill, where sister found it and bought it to replace mother's "lost" items.  This happens more often than one might expect.  My mother has, on more than one occasion, returned a gift from my grandmother, who then saw it marked down and bought it again, thinking she got an even better deal.  This can happen when you live in a place with a population only a few dozen greater than last summer's family reunion.

5)Yoga can save your life.  Everyone practices for a reason, be it fitness (vanity),  health (fear), spirituality (anxiety), personal growth (depression), community (desperation), or sex (yes, sex).  But some people practice yoga because they'll lose their damn minds if they don't (all previous parentheseed items combined times ten).  I am one of those.  I managed exactly three brief yoga sessions on my trip, which were pure butter for my brain. 

After last week, I can say I am personally done with this year's holiday season.  I knocked it out early, leaving me wholeheartedly available to support you over the coming weeks.  'Tis the season, and I'd like to remind you that as you sync your email and handheld device's calendar applications (merging year end tasks with travel arranging, shopping, co-worker and bf/gf's co-worker holiday parties, cookie baking for said parties, and exponentially increasing family drama), and begin to lose entire halfdays to unplanned meltdown, inevitable hangover and spontaneous napping, you may feel as though you do not have time for yoga.  And you don't.  But if you practice anyway, I can promise you that the rest of that crap won't hurt as much.

Happy Hour Yoga (donation-based community class) is happening every Monday in Wicker Park and every Wednesday in Pilsen.  (Check the sidebar on the blog for details.)  If these times don't work for you, email me to have me come to your home or office when it works for you.  Hell, I'll even do a yoga-themed holiday party if you want.  Blue/White, Green/Red, or rainbow candles.  Your pick.