Translating a World on the Edge

This will be my last post until after the first of the year, and I will miss our communication.  But I have lots of family coming for Christmas and New Years, so quite a bit of preparation on my agenda.

As people do, I’m remembering other Christmases because Christmases have the ability to track time for me,  and I’ll bet they do for you, too.  A year in time can change our lives.

Who was there at a  particular Christmas, who was not? What things went  right, or what went  wrong?   What was funny? What was sad? Our Christmases are filled with emotional memories.

I go back to my own childhood, and a rusty red swing on Christmas Eve–no shoes, it wasn’t cold enough for shoes that year.

I swung high as I could, nearly upside down, attempting to toe a high branch on a  huge live oak in the back yard of my aunt, uncle, and cousins house, across the street from mine—- dreaming of all the toys I’d find the next morning under the Christmas tree. So much excitement!  Imagination and anticipation do that.

How many of you ever actually saw Santa Claus when he visited your house ? You smile?  Well,  I’m certain I did on one particular Christmas Eve coming home from Midnight Mass— a flash of red just behind the chimney, the jingle of sleigh bells on a roof covered, not with snow, but pine straw.

We all have Christmas memories, some warm and delightful— and maybe others that we’d like to forget.  And we do have that power to forget, to overlook and move on from Christmases that did not produce feelings of joy.

Your worst Christmas?  Mine was the impending surgery of my middle daughter, three days after Christmas for a malignant brain tumor.  That Christmas began many years of worry, but it began something else, too—my real joy, my total appreciation of the family I was blessed with.  Remember the old song lyric—“You don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it?”

I think it’s good to Remember When— the good times and the bad, because we can learn from both.

This is a season that can fill us with strength, resolve, and a brand new lease on our lives.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you!

And to my husband, my five children, ten grandchildren, sister, cousins, and their families, too. We’ve made it through the good times and the not so good. So let’s Remember When with all the love we’ve got!