Thursday, December 10, 2015

God Bless Us! Everyone!

 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.


One of those Steve Williams type food shots that I'm always trying to emulate.


 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:

kz1000st said...

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.