It's two weeks and a
day before Christmas Day and I'm out with the scooter once again, enjoying the
warm temperatures which are very out of season but most welcome. Today finds me at Panera Bread doing my
thing with the tablet and Bluetooth keyboard which make writing here just as
easy as at the old computer desk at home.
I saw the cardiologist
yesterday for the first time since being discharged from the hospital and going
for a follow-up echo cardiogram, and to celebrate the news that I won't be
needing a pacemaker I'm treating myself to a caramel scone and a hot cup of
coffee. There are people filling the
place today and I find myself in an unusually great spirit feeling a kinship
with them all though I don't know a one of them. Whether each of them will celebrate Christmas I can't tell, but I
wish for each person here with me in this place and time at least some of the
wonderful things I've been feeling in the past few weeks as I anticipate the
coming of Christmas. I'm not expecting
anything special or huge or noteworthy under the tree but I'm feeling many
things inside of myself that I don't think I've felt since adolescence.
I recall myself on a
particular evening at my parents' house.
I was about 13 or so, sitting in front of the fake fireplace in the
living room and enjoying the glow and atmosphere that the fake fire burning on
the andirons provided. It was as
perfect a winter’s evening as any and I was nearly bursting with the same kinds
of feelings I've been experiencing lately.
Although I was many decades from hearing about the concept of an
"old soul," in retrospect the feeling of being an old soul was what I
was struggling to understand on that evening so long ago. It was as if I was reliving somehow
Christmases that had come years, maybe centuries before I was even born, but of
which I had been a part. I was feeling
a nostalgia for a period in history during which I’d not lived. It wasn't a particular setting that I was
remembering, but rather emotions and vague feelings that, although I knew I'd
never experienced, were coming back to me as if through a stage scrim or
fog. These past few weeks I've been
remembering that evening over and over again as once more in my life I'm
sensing those same "memories" trying to come back to me in full measure
as they did that night over 40 years ago.
I don't doubt that
there's an element of having escaped from the frigid claws of the Grim Reaper
in September when I was hospitalized and brought back from the brink of
disaster that's at play here, making me appreciate not wholly unlike Ebenezer
Scrooge the many things I have to live for and yet to experience. There's a feeling as if I've been brought
back from a purgatory of sorts, back to the land of the living with an
appreciation for life that perhaps I'd never had before to this degree. I suspect it's because of all that that I'm
"reliving" memories that aren't really recollections but impressions
of the best of what life has to offer.
Christmas has always been my favorite season and its being here now seems
to have reawakened in me all of its old magic save for perhaps believing in
Santa, though at times maybe I think I still believe.
To be sure, I feel a
little crazy putting all of these nebulous but wonderful feelings into writing
at age 57. I should have felt and known
these things about the gift of life all along, but like so many of us who
become so accustomed to the running of the rat race, I lost sight all too
easily of the so many things that make every season bright in its own way.
This evening it will
be my pleasure to join for dinner at the nursing home in which she is a guest
an aunt who has been like a second mother to me all my life. It is their annual Christmas party and I
wouldn't miss it for anything. Although
my aunt no longer seems to be happy about anything most of the time, I pray
that tonight she'll feel some of the sparkle that I can barely contain. Although so many souls like her will be all
around me, the same tired folks who litter the hallways of the place during my
regular visits, I have no doubt that when I'm there tonight I'll feel like I'm
with a bunch of kids waiting for Christmas to come. Perhaps that's more wishful thinking than anything, but it's my
prayer for them that they'll feel still some of the plentiful joy of Christmastime,
and that I'll feel it all spilling from their hearts as we share the meal.
I see that it's about
time for me to pack up here and head back to the house to post this to the old
blog before I get dressed for dinner.
Though it'll be a short scooter ride back, I'll enjoy every turn of the
tires and wear more of a grin than a smile on my face because of the joy in
which I'm wallowing. Whether or not you
celebrate Christmas, dear reader, I have to hope for you at least a small
portion of all that I've been feeling as of late. It's all too good not to have, so I pray that you have it too in
some good measure!
1 comment:
Two things Joe. First. The weather has been unbelievable and I've gotten to ride the big Kawasaki a couple of times the last couple of days. It has me reliving the Glory days of big, heavy, powerful bikes that existed when it was built in 1983.
Second. I'm glad you survived your heart issues and don't need a pacemaker. Such a nuisance. Periodic phone checks, annual visits and surgical replacements when the time comes. I've been dealing with it for thirty-six years having my first one implanted at the elderly age of 27 back in 1979. I just had the last one installed a year ago and was told I couldn't drive for two weeks. I fixed them. The week after the surgery I had to do a follow up visit and there was no one to take me. Being a good boy I didn't drive. I rode the motorcycle.
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