I remember a Christmas, years ago, when I was not a child. I lived where I live now, but would travel home to my parents house most weekends, and definitely for the holidays. Would make a big effort to gather together whatever---and myself, get into my pickup and travel through weather and roads that would make you think of dog sleds and Ice ages. That year the snow started early, continued for days without let up. Finally reaching that stage where to travel was to prove you were a little brain dead. It gave birth to the first Christmas that I was not able to go home. Instead, I stayed here, kept the fires burning, shoveled snow from the roofs, and looked out the window. Having spent weeks making Christmas decorations and gifts for one customer after another, my body was tired, my disapointment high. I missed my family, my moms apple pie, the watching of my scattered family members turn off at the top of the hill onto the road that led to our house. I missed the familiar celebration, the tradition, the feeling of being a part of a Christmas Celebration. I remember seeing the lights from the neighbors houses, the cars crunching along the road in front of the shop-----people on their way to their own homes---what few who were brazen enough to venture out onto the iced over roadway---and felt even more isolated. It was about that time the power went off, the television went out, and what bits of the trappings of Christmas left faded away. That was the year I discovered that we make our own holiday. We can either sit and mope about what we dont have-----or call home---or put up a scrap tree for the cats with cans of tuna as gifts. We can try and make our own pie. We can call the lady whose husband had died a couple months before and ask her how she was faring. We can sit in the dark and remember what Christmas is all about---what it means, what it takes to celebrate. That turned out to be a great Christmas for me. The next weekend, sitting at home, I realized that. No matter what, we do make our own holidays. Sometimes, not having what we think we need gives us time to remember that we have enough. We have everything.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 17:38:16 +0000
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