My halls have been decked for over two weeks – I jumped into the holiday season with two feet this year. I haven’t seen much of what is on display for four years – I packed my last real Christmas away just prior to opening a box filled with so much grief it’s taken these many years to get a handle on it.
We’d stepped into 2018 with a monster in the house – we tried to pretend it wasn’t there but it got the better of us by spring. We’d tossed Christmas 2017 into the attic like a couple of teenagers just getting the job done and closed the door on another project that could wait for a better day. The better day never arrived.
I hardly remember the Christmas of 2018 – my goal that year was to just get through it. I crawled out of the holiday season only to have to cope with the mess life had thrown my way as well as the one we’d thrown into the attic the year before.
2019 arrived and with it the flurry of change. I sold the house, bought a condo, and had to sort and pack and purge and choose only the pieces of my life that I could fit into what was going to be my future. I’d reached the end of the line and the front of the line at the very same time.
The boxes of Christmas from the attic were moved into the crawl space of what was now my daughter’s house and I set to the task of settling into a new and unfamiliar life.
By the time Christmas 2019 arrived I was feeling as settled as I thought I could ever be in my new place and space. I gifted the family a holiday with the remaining funds from the sale of our family home. I found myself excited about the gift, not the season.
We squeaked the trip under the wire of the pandemic in 2020 then marched together and alone with the rest of the planet into an uncharted world of lockdowns and fear, cancellations and isolation. Christmas 2020 would be like nothing we had experienced before.
Christmas 2020 came and went. 2021 dawned – the pandemic became old news even as it dominated the news, it wasn’t going anywhere and neither were we. I sold the condo, bought a third of a house and began to make the most of this strange new world.
The boxes of Christmases past finally made their way out of the crawl space into the light of Christmas 2021.
This morning I’m sitting in the glow of a thousand twinkle lights and in the midst of a mother lode of memories. My house smells like the gingerbread I made with my grandchildren on the weekend and under my tree are wrapped presents I’m actually excited to dish out.
Christmas 2021 – the season has arrived and I’ve opened my heart to receive it.
