Memories, Christmas memories -

I'm listening to an old LP of Christmas music - instrumentals - that my mother used to play all the time when we were little. The sound is so rich, and the popping and static reminds me of those holidays in the 1960s and 1970s when the snow was heavy, and thick, the colored christmas lights shone out from their nests of white, and it was toasty warm inside.

My mother and her sisters always put their all into the holidays - decorating, baking, selecting presents and wrapping them - now that I'm that age, I wonder how they did it all. They created a magical, special environment that gave meaning to the idea of Santa Claus and the human interaction that this time is supposed to bring us.

I have to fight to keep the house clean, and if it weren't for the internet, no one would get a present of any kind.

Sometimes, I think that we just lose the ability to experience that magic again, because of our age, and the pressing responsibilities that we have as adults.

But, four years ago, my sister and her girlfriend were able to re-create that magic when I spent Christmas at their home in Albany - so I know that it's possible.

This was one of the first holiday seasons where I didn't have huge emotional upheaval related to my family. For eleven years; from 1988 to 1991, I was PNG with most of my family. Before my mother went into a home, she and my sister were planning family events for Thanksgiving where I was excluded. My father would beg me to attend Christmas, and a few hours later his wife would call and say that they had no place to put me, they didn't have enough places at the table, they were going to one of his sister's homes and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to go there.

So, every holiday was a struggle from about October until today. I didn't spend Christmas with my family for years. Today, and earlier in the season, I was noticing that there was this huge absence of emotional stress around the holidays. It's just a big irritation in the middle of the work effort around the end of the year.

Tomorrow morning, most of the rest of the world and I go back to work.

My sister gave me a book that looks to be a HOOT - a novel about the life of the wicked witch of the west! She also gave me a switchplate cover that's pink with stars on it and says "Princess" - which will go on the wall next to the bedroom closet door tonight later. A new Star Trek key chain .. all amusing stuff.

I'm now listening to the Messiah. The sound of LPs is so rich, compared to CDs and other digitized forms.

Another Christmas past.

Back to reality.