These are the things dancing in my thoughts
I have found that the older I get the earlier I go to bed.
I also get up earlier in the morning — usually 5 or 5:30.
I call that time in the morning my “quiet time.”
I do a lot of reflecting in the morning. When I was a younger man I would have scoffed at the notion of an older version of myself doing something like “reflecting.”
But that’s what mornings are, now, for me.
The day hasn’t yet begun to wear me down. The little cracks and chips of the day haven’t started forming yet.
It is this time of the year — the Christmas season — that these reflections begin to take on a deeper feeling.
There are more things to look back on, more and better memories to pore over.
My grandmother and my mother loved Christmas — loved this time of year.
Even during the so-called “bad times,” they loved the Christmas season — when sons and brothers and uncles were in faraway places at war.
My grandmother always wanted the Christmas Story read from the Bible —usually on Christmas Eve; my mother wanted her family around her — all of us.
Mom would also, every Dec. 1, put up a small Christmas tree and hang these little presents from them, and every day her grandchildren were expected to come by and pick one off the tree and open it.
They were nothing spectacular. I think the most extravagant item on those trees might have been Hot Wheels cars. Sometimes it might just be a piece of candy, a little compass, ChapStick.
Silly stuff ...
But it meant something.
And every Christmas morning we would wait until all of the family had gathered before we started opening presents.
Getting through Christmas Eve was bad enough — all that waiting until Christmas morning — but sitting in the family room waiting for an aunt and uncle to show up was maddening.
But we waited.
Every year.
Patiently — well, maybe not patiently — waiting for the last family member to show up, with phone calls to the stragglers every 10 minutes. “When are you leaving? Why haven’t you left yet?”
It was easier when we lived in Illinois and the families weren’t nearby, because they would all show up at our house a couple of days before Christmas and on Christmas morning we just had to wait for everyone to grab a cup of coffee or hot chocolate.
When our families lived within 10 miles of each other was the test of patience.
My grandmother and mother are gone now. My brothers and I don’t gather together on Christmas mornings with our kids in tow. We call each other, wish each other a Merry Christmas, ask what “Santa got the kids,” and then go about visiting in-laws (and outlaws).
We don’t gather together for the reading of the Christmas Story.
None of us put up a small Christmas tree and hang silly presents from it for the kids — and we’re grandparents now.
I still find a sense of the season when I see a Christmas parade; go Christmas shopping; see stores and homes decorated for the season; or when I am reminded, and I often am, what all of this is really supposed to be about.
See, I believe — and I truly do in my heart — this season brings out the kindness in us all.
And there is one line I remember most — that keeps popping up in my thoughts: Luke 1:19: “But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”
These are the things dancing in my head on these mornings.
Merry Christmas.
