I get this feeling every Christmas, after everything is over, that I’m supposed to be doing something. That there is this elusive something that needs to be done, but I can’t quite grasp at what it is, so I wander around the apartment feeling a little lost and disoriented. Oh, I know it’s just the after-Christmas letdown . . . for weeks we’ve been going places, baking things, and we’ve been busy little bees. And then suddenly, in one morning, it’s all done. It also doesn’t help me any that entire cities shut down on Christmas day. No stores to browse through, and you can’t use those wonderful giftcards just yet. There are always the movies . . . Tim and I used to have a Christmas movie tradition, but that disappeared with the arrival of Joshua, and who knows when it will return.
So in my search for things to do I am officially ready for Christmas to be over. I know that technically it is over, but I mean that I’m ready to move on to whatever is next. Take down the garland, pack away the lights . . . I am ready for our home to be back to normal. And this actually presents a bigger problem than one might think. The thing is, my family is decidedly not ready for the holidays to end. In fact, I think that we could leave the decorations out all year long and they would be as happy as clams. Tim loves the holidays, and it feels so warm and cozy to him when our house is Christmassy. Joshua, in his own special way, loves Christmas too. He loves it in the way the lights on the tree are the first thing on his mind in the morning. He loves it in the way he sees Santa everywhere we go, “who, who, whoooo.” And he loves it in the way he’s fallen completely and madly in love with snowmen.
This year my craft for our home was to paint a small wooden snowman. The Christmas lights poke through the back and outline the whole thing, and to my surprise it really turned out quite well. The point is to let you know that we might actually have the snowman still decorating our home in, say, June. I simply don’t know if I can separate Joshua from it without breaking his sweet little heart. It’s not the way he points to it and talks about it nonstop. I could make the break if that was all it was. And it’s almost not the way he likes to hug it every ten minutes or so, but I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a factor. Really, it’s the way he likes to kiss it if he’s been missing it for too long. Or before we leave the house, he puckers his lips and says “mmmmmmm,” straining to reach out of our arms and just get one last kiss from the snowman. And it might just break my heart to see his get broken. Who knows, we may just find a special place in his room to make the snowman a home.
I’ve decided, also, that my readiness to move on from the holidays is simply my impatience in waiting for what comes next. See, what comes next is probably for us to move from Las Vegas. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a lot better here than I actually ever thought it would be. We’ve decided, though, that it’s not where we want to stay, and it’s not where we want to raise a family. (Is it okay for kids to grow up thinking that gambling and naked women on billboards are normal? I just don’t think so.) Our state of choice at this time is Oklahoma, and I’ve been looking at Oklahoma City travel brochures online. It seems like such a family-friendly place compared to Las Vegas, and I get excited and a little ahead of myself in planning. But who can blame me when there’s a zoo? A real, live, functioning zoo! The “zoo” here (in the ghetto of Las Vegas) sits on the corner lot of a residential neighborhood, and you can look in through the front gate to see the contents in their entirety. We were utterly disappointed and disillusioned enough to decide not to waste our time, and we’ve since been visiting the local PetSmart to learn about animals. You do what you have to.
So we’ll wait, and we’ll see what happens . . . and I will try to just enjoy the moment and not take it all away from my family too soon. And if you come to visit us in June and the tree is still in the corner – well, you’ll know why.
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