Ah...the Day After!

It’s not that Christmas Day is over that pleases me, it’s that the Christmas preparation is over. It is an exciting, wonderful, special, and a welcomed time every year, but it also nice when it’s over.

The long preparations now become “put-a-ways” and clean-ups.

The family is back to their comfortable beds, and things familiar to them. It is right. It is the way things are in this day and age of close distance.

  

We grandparents had a magnificent time participating in the feast, the day, the festivities, the noise, the clutter and the chaos. It is wonderful and infectious; All  the ramparts held.

I remember one time when Christmas was held at our house. It was amazing when everyone left. In an instant I could hear the refrigerator hum again. I could hear the heat pipes creak in the walls, night lights were no longer needed to find one’s way to the bathroom and the hot water returned to normal. AND the sink, we hadn't seen the bottom of the sink in four days and how about the living room floor? It’s no longer festooned with opened toys, abandoned games, old bows, discarded garments, stored gifts, plastic bags of used wrappings and half-empty paper cups.

I would not change it for anything. I can’t wait for next Christmas.

The next holiday is next week, New Years. A wonderful alone time. No noise makers, no shouting “Happy New Year.” I’ll be in bed by ten and will welcome in 2014 by sleeping with expectant wishes, profound hopes for global peace and continued wonderment at the sacred joy of the universe.