Christmas was so relaxing this year, and made even more special by my parents upcoming move from the big blue house on Hardscrabble Road. Next year we will be having an Idaho Christmas, or perhaps filling up the guest room at my grandparents house. It's funny how we are given new eyes to see the things that are important to us, just in time for them to change. Does the promise of loss make old things seem glamorous, or just shed some light on the way things have always been? Either way, it seems important to realize that we don't have to continue dwelling in the past in order for it to be precious to us.
Easier said than done, as life marches on before we are ready. Or should I say, before I am ready. Me, the grown child who once became depressed and despondent when my dad chose to chop down a tree in our yard. One that was interfering with the power lines. Not my favorite climbing tree, but just a tree. Just a slight alteration of the view from the kitchen window. If I had known what an environmentalist was then, I would have eagerly joined the cause at the age of six. Not to protect mother earth, but to save my little girl brain from the uncertainy of sitting in the back seat of a minivan, never knowing when we would round the curve to find a bald hillside where once stood a forest.
There is something so urgent and temporary about being human; something in all of us that gets nostalgic about the time that is slipping through our fingers, knowing we can never have it back...and something that makes us get all teary eyed and sappy about babies growing up, and say stuff like, I remember when you were born, and other highly original phrases.
Last night, I lay awake in what used to be my bedroom, with my husband beside me (weird), and thought about all the thinking, planning, and dreaming that went on there...wishing on a plastic glow in the dark star from Wal Mart. Never could I have imagined a life as full and blessed as the one that has come my way so far.
All that to say that this Christmas, we all collected some more beautiful memories in the blue house...ones that will stay with us through the inevitable changes as my mom and dad move to Boise, Jonah learns to walk, my little brother graduates from high school...and yes...a tree is chopped down to make way for a clearer view.