Christmas spirit

It was a great Christmas day!  Apparently I am the only one in the household who still wakes up super early on Christmas morning and can’t get back to sleep.  Eventually I just went downstairs, made coffee and prepared a sweet baked pastry to share with the sleepyheads as they arose.

I fired up the gas log for the first time this season and Marlee, Abby, Alice, Mary and I opened stockings.  No grumps in the bunch.  We ate the Monkey bread and then did the gift exchange.  It seemed like we had a lot of gifts and lots of thoughtful stuff.  Abby gave Mary and me a ukulele and I vowed to actually try and learn to play at least a few chords that might add up to a song.  I downloaded a tuner app and uke lessons on my iPad.  Marlee set me up with the socks I asked for and Mary and Alice gifted art.  Mary acquired a framed, numbered linocut print from one of my favorite local artists, Alynn Guerra. Alice, along with her boyfriend Zack arranged for an original cartoon drawing from Jeffrey Brown.  Jeff, a now-famous (in certain circles) graphic novelist, used to be my intern at GRTV back in the 1990’s.  I wrote about this back in June. The cartoon features Elvis, our cat and me.  I was quite touched!

 

It was a laid back afternoon with Alice and Abby bidding adieu to hang out with their mom and their maternal grandparents, Harold & Carol, and the rest of us napping, tinkering with Christmas presents, doing dishes and gorging on sweets.

One late afternoon Christmas phone call I received was an automated call from St Mary’s Hospital reminding me of my CT scan on Thursday morning.  I must arrive early to have blood drawn.  It has been 6 weeks from my last x-ray showing no change or cancer growth and I expect this week's scan will reveal the same.

I had what felt like a pretty ridiculous thought: This could be my last Christmas.  Of course it could be your last Christmas or anyone else’s last Christmas but usually we don’t think about these things.  Mortality consciousness comes with this territory. I regretted having the thought (especially since I don’t feel sick at all) but upon further contemplation, I decided that remembering how short life is could really help one focus on the important things and especially avoid the petty negative interactions and the cantankerous moments.

So this was the sweetest Christmas ever!  And it continues… tomorrow is my extended family Christmas and Saturday is my in-law (Willey) Christmas.