Another Christmas has come, and here I am at home, while my children and their expanding families (one is now married with in-laws, the other has children and an on-again-off-again fiancé) are off to celebrate the day with their other families.
It's the way things are at the christmas holiday season year after year, for me.
Because a number of years ago, I decided that if I truly was an atheist, that it was hypocritical of me to be an atheist but still partake in the benefits of faith - even if that benefit was the receiving and giving of gifts. My desire for presents lost to my desire to be true to myself.
But the truth is, I like things this way now...
I don't spend weeks of my life shopping for something new for everyone in the family each fall.
I don't have to keep track of what I bought for my sisters, so that I don't do a (perish the thought!) repeat gifting of some previous year.
I don't have find new and interesting christmas cards to mail (and buy the stamps to send them, too).
I don't have to find the boxes with the christmas decorations out in the storage shed or in the back of the closet, dig through them and spread that glittery obnoxious deep neon green and shimmery red glitter and garland all around the house, like I used to do when my own kids were small and I was still in denial about my lack of christmas enthusiasm.
There are about a million things which I no longer have to do anymore.
So instead, I do something which I do like, and which costs me nothing, and is actually more in the spirit of the season:
I enjoy the peace and quiet of my house.
I have two cups of coffee while it's still piping hot.
I eat whatever appeals to me. This morning - and try not to gag while you read it - it was sliced pastrami meat, just some slices, no sandwich, and in just a few minutes, I think I'll go make myself some fresh hashbrowned potatoes and maple sausage gravy. And for just this one day, I don't think about my diabetes. At all.
I give the cats an entire plate full of the wet food they belabor me for every other day of the year, and then watch them with a cheshire cat grin as they wander about and find a place to collapse into a short food-coma, snoring soft cat-snores.
I spend time thinking about the past year, and the milestones our family has surmounted and the days when we all collectively lost our minds over something serious or something crazy. I recall the evenings when my sister and I took my grandkids to dinner and the movies, which all four of us totally love, and the conversations we had with two 9 years olds (now one is 10) which were both enlightening and hilarious on occasion.
This year I had the newest grandchild to consider, who in the past two months went from turtle-slow crawling to almost running, in a 1 year old, semi-frankenstein sort of high-knee pumping, loud foot stumping way. She's developed quite the personality, with extraordinarily loud yelling (you'd think she was four or five from the volume of sound coming out of her) and the sweetest sound in the universe - baby chortles, which is a combination of chuckling, giggling and snorting.
Mostly what I spend christmas morning doing over the past decade or so now, is to reflect on the Love I have and have had, and how very grateful I am just to still be alive and around to watch that Love grow with my children and their expanding family connections.
After all when you get down to it, is life really about anything else than the Love you give and receive? It's the joy of that moment when you meet your child for the first time. When you gather with family at the hospital in quiet thankfulness that the grim reaper has once again been defeated, and that your mother will be coming home again, soon. The instant that you look into the eyes of another and recognize the Love shining back at you is not just the heat of passion, but a slower-burning fire which can last the test of time.
Love is what it's all about, and I have that in great plenty.
I hope that each one of you does, too.
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas, too!
Oops, forgot the entertainment portion of the diary, one of my favorites from a man who we lost all too early and some friends from back in the day: