Some of you are certainly prompt with your Christmas cards
and letters! The first two arrived in the mail yesterday, emphasizing the big
task on my list for the next few weeks; that of completing our own family
Christmas greetings before the big event. I’m excited about the task ahead and
looking forward to reconnecting with long-missed friends and distant family
members. At the same time I have mixed emotions about this season. This just
may be a hard to write Christmas Letter.
I always look forward to Christmas as not just a celebration
of Christ’s birth, but a celebration of love and family and faith. It’s the
giving of time and self much more than the giving of gifts that makes this
holiday special for me. But this will be a celebration of mixed blessings, this
Christmas of 2013. This year our home will feel more empty than it has in
thirty-three years as this season marks the end of multiple generations sharing
this place, and this space. It will be our first empty nest Christmas since we
began our family a third of a century ago.
Oh yes, we’ll have plenty of family time, not to worry; but
to wake up on Christmas morning to a quiet house, and not hear the squeal of
little voices or the patter of little feet (or these days the gentle treading
of my son’s size eleven slippers) will not necessarily be a welcome change. It
will be a difficult adjustment, one that I do not anticipate with joy, one that
will not provoke a, “Yes, finally have the house to ourselves again” kind of
feeling (although I’m sure that sentiment will flash through my brain on
occasion, perhaps in the middle of a steamy hot shower, or watching a movie in
the family room in my pajamas).
Passages, reimagining life as I mentioned last week; that is
what is being thrust upon us this Christmas season. And with no children at
home, and grandchildren at the other end of the continent, this will be a
rather abrupt shift to a new stage of life for us.
S and L, and D and I were working away at Mom’s condo
Saturday, packing and painting and arranging, and sneaking in a quick pizza and
soda for sustenance. It felt good and it brought back memories of our own first
move to our own place. It’s a good thing to take on that responsibility, and
the even bigger responsibility of being a caretaker for Grandma’s place for a
time, a responsibility S and L are not taking lightly. Still, they’re excited
to be moving out and taking this large next step in their life together as a
couple.
Put in the context of celebrating new life, I think this
Christmas will be exactly that, a time to celebrate the birth of newly
re-imagined lives and the baby steps it takes to start down new paths, paths
that may take us far apart, but at the end of life as we know it, will
inevitably bring us back together in that sweet eternal, multigenerational home
that my faith tells me is waiting somewhere down the road.
And speaking of Christmas Letters, are you for or against
them? I have to say for, but with specific conditions: they should be limited
to two pages or less including photos; and they should be directed at close
friends and family with whom you have not been able to share the gift of time
over the past year. I suppose a third condition might be that they cover major
events or life changes, but not offer a blow by blow chronology of the entire
year. But hey, that’s just my opinion, and how I approach my letters.
Christmas Letters are important to me because we have close
friends and relatives who we rarely have a chance to see or talk with. I
treasure those relationships but sometimes I have no way to share just how much
they mean to me other than through a letter. The Christmas Letter is my way of
reaching out and asking how they are and what important things have happened in
their lives over the past year. And it’s my way of answering those same
questions I assume they might have of me. Maybe I’m foolish to make that
assumption, you know, that someone might actually care about me and my family
the way I care for them. So be it; I’ll take that chance because Christmas for
me is an affirmation of life and love and family and relationships. Oh, and if
you’re friends or relatives who haven’t heard from us at Christmas recently and
have been missing that connection then feel free to take me to task for that
oversight; I’ve probably screwed up the Christmas Letter list somehow.
Empty nests and Christmas Letters; hmm…what strange
bedfellows in the pondering business. Although that peculiar linkage may just
get me past the emptiness I’m already starting to feel and warm up the old
ticker enough to get me started on this year’s Christmas Letter…Pops
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