Christmas as a Grown-up

Norman Rockwell holidays don’t exist. At least not in my world they don’t. Oh, you can pretty it all up, string some lights on it, and tag with a big red bow – but if real people, real human beings are involved, then stuff is going to happen.

Many of us have been married so long, we finish each other’s sentences and superbly ignore the irritating things about the other. Those things that in quiet times of reflection can send you over the edge.

He clicks his fingernails against one another, but only when you’re trying to watch television. Click, click, click. She glances over at him and stares just long enough that she hopes he “gets it” and stops. He does for a couple of minutes, and then either forgets or doesn’t care how much it bothers her, and he starts again.

She wants to do her pedicure’s right in the middle of the living room, while he’s trying to watch the last NASCAR race of the year. And she’s commentating, all through it, even though he knows that she knows NOTHING about what she’s saying. He would drown her out, but she just gets louder if he doesn’t answer.

They’ve been together for years now, the “duties” have long ago been split and everyone knows their part. So, she wonders why she still has to verbally ask him will he take out the trash, because surely, he can see for himself that things are now toppling over. He acts as if he doesn’t mind, but she thinks – if he doesn’t mind – then WHY WON’T HE JUST DO IT?!

He comes in from work, he’s starving, but he doesn’t smell anything cooking. He tries to remember when all of that stopped. When it just stopped being normal to have a cooked meal every night after a hard day’s work. Ah, now he remembers, he knows exactly when everything changed. When the last kid left home.

When the children are all gone and there is a space between them leaving and grandchildren arriving – you don’t quite know what to do with yourself. Or your empty house. All the things that drive you crazy now – you didn’t have much time to notice it before. Something else was always happening – you always seemed to have some other place to be.

And how much you love Christmas and the other holidays changes as well. Your children are splitting their time between multiple families, all the gatherings are not under your roof, and everybody isn’t going to come home every holiday.

It’s hard. It’s really hard. You talk to yourself and tell yourself, new days are coming, new times, with new traditions – but a part of you is selfish and you want everything to stay the same, be the same, as it always was.

Well that’s not how life really works. So, we look for new ways to find our happy and our joy. New ways to feel the same Christmas spirit as everyone else. It might not always work every single day, but when it does, man is it glorious!

Here’s to wishing you all a Merry Christmas filled with peace, love, hope and many days of absolute gloriousness.