ALRIGHT, EVERYBODY BACK IN THE BOX!!!


So the Holidays are over . . . the Carols are off the play lists, stuffed back into their boxes marked “archives” for another year. Light strands are wound back up and boxed and hauled into the crawlspace . . . The houses, yes, they seem to move back where they were, having crouched a little closer together for the period of time from November until now. They all looked so beautiful for those 5 weeks of precious adornment . . . The smells change, too, Gone are the intoxicating scents of cinnamon, pine, ginger, and chocolate. It is still cold outside, and the sky is still starkly beautiful in SoCal, as the sun languishes on the edge of the horizon in mid-afternoon, illuminating vague rogue clouds but providing little of the heat to which we’ve grown accustomed during the balance of the year. It is the one joy left at the joyless end of revelry.

Taking a Christmas tree down is like saying goodbye to a good friend who is moving away without a specific destination and no means of contact. Sure, if you’re lucky, your 10 year old will blithely say to you that “there’s always next year.” Once LOST passed beyond 40 there was this barely-above-a-whisper-prayer in deep the recesses of the brain, echoing into thesoul, “Please God, let him be right about that.”

The boxes of ornaments, some almost 30 years old in their own right, are carefully, painfully repacked, and past years are reflected upon. The very boxes in which they were packed are marvelous in their disrepair. Some of their boxes still sport price tags from a store long since closed, bought by a child more than three decades ago; meaningless pieces of history, still carefully preserved and still quite functional. Then there are the trinkets, the baubles, the (as LOST's sister would say) chotchkes, bits and pieces from the past, representing places visited, specific events (the multiple commemorations of “Baby’s First Christmas), and simple gifts from close family members and friends. Here’s the one we got in Colorado, the two from Hawaii, there’s the one we just picked up this year. All put away until next November, such a long time from now, and so much stuff standing in between us. How stangely sad it is to say so long, and know that there is so much to do between now and then.