It isn't easy being green - especially when you're urban and love Thai take out. But I'm sure gonna try.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Wrapping Up The Holidays

For my kids, the holiday season was like one big non-stop toy-fest. We started with Hannukah in our home, then traveled to celebrate Christmas with my in-laws, and then onto my folks' place where we celebrated Hannukah again.

I found myself thinking about the times I used to refuse my grandmother's famous chopped liver. To me it resembled brown muck, but to others it was pure delicacy. She would slather it all over a Tam Tam cracker and wave it in front of me. I would make a nasty face and shake my head, no.

"There are children starving in Africa," she'd remind me. And I'd feel guilt at not wanting to eat her food ... but not enough guilt to actually eat it.

I always hear her over the holidays and at birthdays, too. Literally, I look at my kids with their new toys, and think, "There are children starving in Africa, and India, and America. There are garbage dumps overflowing with plastic toys that will sit there, not degrading for all eternity." I feel guilty, but not guilty enough to change our experience.

Between my old work as a toy-tester and generous relatives, we have a ton of kids' stuff crammed into not a lot of space. Ironically, for the most part, my kids play their same favorite games over and over again, leaving 3/4 of their collection untouched. This past year, I tried to donate a slew of gently used toys to charity, but no one wanted them! They all claimed the toys had to be new and unopened, which I sort of understood from a health perspective, I guess, but isn't that what Lysol is for?

Then there is the gift wrapping. My kids think I am the worst gift-giving mother because I cringe at the thought of wasting all that paper. I contemplated buying reusable gift bags this year, but I couldn't figure out the logic. Do you give it and take it back? Or do you spend an extra ten dollars on a present and consider it a contribution to future gift receivers? And what's the guarantee that gift bag even makes it out to the next person and doesn't just end up in the trash anyhow?

We haven't even talked about holiday prep! My husband was working 70-hour weeks, and I barely had time to breath between my mommy duties, my writing duties, my class-parent duties, my cooking for my in-laws duties, and the therapy I needed to get through all the ways I'd over-extended myself. (Just kidding ... sort of).

I drove around for hours back and forth across the city looking for the perfect gift.

I ordered take-out three times in two weeks, and brought home dinner from Whole Foods twice. More than once, I threw away a mound of styrofoam containers. More than once I winced at my wastefulness and my inability to figure out a better way to deal with take-out.

"If I were truly green," I told myself, "I'd have supplied my own take-out containers .... Of course, If I'd had time to bring my containers to the restaurant, I wouldn't have needed take-out in the first place!"

Angst, angst, angst.

Guilt, guilt, guilt.

And in the middle of my fifth wave of neurosis, stressing about why my parents wouldn't go out of their way to get organic produce and insisted on serving conventional beef, I received an email from an old friend of mine who had recently checked out my blog.

She wrote:

"We have to go easy on ourselves sometimes and give in to the not-so-green life in order to survive, but how to fairly balance is a struggle of morals and reason!"

Beautifully put. (Thanks T!)

Balance. Morals. Reason. Sanity.

So, we ate a dinner of conventional meatballs, with a side of local potatoes and greens I'd brought from home. Gluten-free homemade brownies with Guatemalan melon on the side for desert. And we bought a goat and honeybees through Heifer, and hopefully did a little good for some struggling families elsewhere in the world.

Balance.

Now, if I could only keep my balance taking all these gift boxes to the recycling bin tomorrow.

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