Three Wishes (Not so much)

I rarely break the HNT rules, but I just can't do this week's Three Wishes theme. I'm sorry to say, I just haven't spent enough time blogging or commenting this year to feel like I have any idea what to give anyone. It's been my choice, I just disconnected a little bit, it is what it is.

But I do wish a few things for EVERYONE who's dropped by this blog over the past year. Even though I may not reciprocate comments nearly as much as I should, I dearly appreciate all of you who come by and say hi, and your support over the months has meant a lot.

I hope we all have a year that's better than the last, one that brings us peace and love and satisfaction in our lives, one that makes feel more alive and more connected to the people and animals we care about, one that brings us a daily laugh and a weekly cry (they're both good for you). Most of all, I hope that a year from now, when we all sit down and reflect again, we can say "That was a pretty good fucking year."

Now since you're here, I thought I would start sharing some of my Christmas thoughts and recollections. I realized recently that most of this is only in my head, and at the rate I'm going, if I don't record it somewhere, it's going to disappear. It may not mean much to anyone else, but I'll be glad I wrote it down. In no particular order, I'm just going to start leaving some Christmas thoughts and memories here like so much tinsel. See if anything sparkles for you.

• My saddest memory of Christmas is from I was maybe 8, and my dad bought a special gift for me, a little woodworking set. It wasn't a Santa gift, it wasn't a Mom-and-Dad gift, it was a gift JUST from my dad JUST for me, and he wanted to give it to me because I had been his little helper remodeling our family room and he was excited to share it with me. Well, I didn't realize that at the time, and being a selfish little jerk, I pouted and cried and told him I hated it. I wanted Legos or Star Wars toys instead. My mom told me later how disappointed my dad was. Since he was gone a couple years later, I never got to tell him how bad I've felt about that. My kid better never act that way towards me--she'll catch a smack upside the head.
  
• Speaking of Legos, my favorite Christmas morning, from a toy perspective, was the year I got the super-duper Lego castle set. It was a big huge castle with a drawbridge and towers and little knights and horses and stuff. I was in dorky kid heaven for years with that thing. In fact, I still have all the pieces in a box in my basement, and I plan to use them to build a scale model of my house someday.
  
• Most of the memories which come back to me at Christmastime are not of the actual Christmases themselves. For me, Christmas Day was always a letdown, even with the excitement of running to the tree to see what we got. For me, it was always more about the "season", the month of excitement and activity and traditions leading up to it. Once it got here, it was all over. What I remember now after 20 or 30 years are the times my mom would try to help me learn to play Christmas carols on our little electric piano, watching our favorite shows' Christmas episodes (for some reason, Taxi and Saturday Night Live remain my favorites), the time I bought my mom a hurricane lamp from a local artist and she cried (because she loved it), performing in the annual school show (that was me on tenor sax), working long nights at the record store with all the crazy people. That's what I miss now, the fact that there was so much STUFF going on the whole month that reminded you it was Christmastime. Now it's just stress at work, not enough money to buy presents and BAM it's all over.
  
• Mrs. J is just now starting to understand my odd attachment to Christmas music, especially the bad kind. I realize now that it's all thanks to my mom and dad being squares. When I was a kid, we had 4 or 5 Christmas albums (yes, real vinyl), and all but one was an easy listening compilation of the 60s and 70s' best cheese--Percy Faith, Perry Como, Andy Williams, we had 'em all. The other one was Barbra Streisand, which we only put on when Mom insisted on it. But the other ones I loved! I would sit in front of the record player and put them on and play with the little Santas and tomtes (Swedish elves) and even the Nativity scene. There are still certain songs that evoke the image of the album jacket in my head whenever I hear them. It's for that reason that when December hits, my radio tuner flips from alternative rock to the all-Christmas channel, and why today I found myself humming along to Mantovani and Dean Martin in my office.
  

That'll do for now. I'll keep strolling down Memory Lane tomorrow.