and not a snowflake…

It’s interesting.

In its own way, Christmas has reached back to take my hand and gently guide me along the path of the most wonderful time of the year. I feel the Christmas spirit within me. And falling out from me, like flashes of moonbeam.

Not like when I was 14 and going to the 5 & 10 on Main Street and with my paper-route money buying my mother two 25 cent drinking glasses, which felt so big to me. I picked these out. Not like when I’ve been wildly in love most of the past 15 years, spending endless minutes and hours really, really giving everything to a special gift. Some delight in a shop window calling me in. A t-shirt I’ve come upon – exactly perfect. Every small thing wrapped and crammed into a stocking – love, love, love.

That’s not here this year. No special one to dream about, and share those dreams. My boys each 1000 miles away – money and cards and phone calls, if I’m lucky a real-time video. Nothing like a 25 cent glass under the tree. Nothing like a gift I’m just bursting to see the most important person open Christmas morning.

And yet. Christmas has its way with me. “Happy holidays,” I say. “Merry Christmas,” I say. The living wreath on the dentist’s door. The welcoming tree in the Y’s lobby. The $52 Christmas stocking I held in my hand in a special downtown store just the other day – it was so incredibly lovely and wonderful and all its own special – knowing I’d buy it in a second if this was a different time.

And yet. I rejoice with the next Christmas song to come on a San Luis rock radio station. To stroll and drive around the colored lights all about in this trailer park. People streaming into the Y wearing goofy holiday sweaters. Human reindeer. Me too.

Christmas, the way it always does, has invited me, for about the 75th time, to come in and sit in front of the fireplace. Hallucinate joy and good cheer a while. And like I always do, I’ve said, “Yes. Thank you.”