The memes about Mariah Carey defrosting have already started to circulate on my social media. I normally take this as a nudge to start preparations and to emotionally prepare myself for the mental aerobics surrounding planning the season for us.
As an immigrant in the West, this is equivalent to our Guyanese sayings “bruking up” or “putting away” the house. Before the physical work starts, first up it’s your strategy and logistical planning that trumps everything so you can out manoeuvre the seasonal depression that always seems to hit. My goal every year has always been to plan our days months ahead, and by extension our travel plans, so the brain is so preoccupied and there is no time to grieve over what our days could be like if families were closely knit and borders weren’t so far.
Sometimes the planning is so intense that anticipatory anxiety steps in. So much planning, overestimation and anticipating how things should go, introduce a new type of fear.
