All the baking is done. The tree is up and it's decorated. The train garden is up and running. The house is clean. Santa Claus has been and gone.Gloria and I had dinner on Christmas Eve with Faye and Kenny, my inlaws, their son Ken, Jr., and his wife Nikki, and her father Nick and Nick's significant other, Jane. Faye made her traditional Christmas lasagna, and I ate with my traditional Christmas gusto, to vow when it was over that I'd never eat again -- that I'd consumed enough to last me for the rest of my life.
Today will be my 61st Christmas day. I can remember lots of them, if not most of them, though the Christmases of my youth are somehow the most vivid.
Tomorrow we'll visit the kids and we'll play with the grandkids: Daniel and Aiden and Lily, Sporky if the visitation schedule's right, and maybe even Molly if her Mom's not in her usual snit.
We'll see our son David and his wife Erica in their new house and I'll try not to stare too intently at Erica's belly, from whence little Sophia will join us in a couple weeks.
Some time this week I'll try and visit my sister in Pennsylvania, where I'll eat too much ravioli. We'll talk about people we knew when we were young, many of whom I haven't thought about in years, some of whom I've totally forgotten. My wife, who shared none of that, will be bored to tears but she'll try to make polite conversation.
I have a lovely family, a family with its share of simultaneous affection, contention and strife, a family with its own triumphs and failures and some few tragedies. We're not interchangable with any other family, but at the same time we're not all that different.
That similarity is what forms our common bond. It expresses itself most of the time as a mere awareness of our neighbors, but at this special time of year our commonalty ripens into active good will, and the good will manifests itself as something akin to, probably a distinct form of, love for our fellow man (and woman, naturally).
I wish each of you a Merry Christmas, and I hope that for each of us this season will be satisfying and fulfilling, bringing joy and contentment. I hope this Christmas is one that we'll remember fondly for many years to come.