I refuse to stuff stockings.

I am now going to proceed to do none of the things that I promised I would do.
Don't worry; there's still time.

What I want to talk about now is some random Christmas and family stuff.

I love my family.  I love each and every one of the whole lot.  We're spread out around the country, and I love that, because it makes every meet-up a destination-vacation, without even trying.  Getting together to see family is never just an afternoon's worth of an ordeal.  We span days, sometimes weeks, and we always inevitably see too much of each other for our own collective good, but I personally never get sick of anyone.  That's all the old-folks' jobs.

That's another interesting piece of revelation I've recently had about my family.  We're all pretty old, and we've all been old.  Now, I guess I should clarify that when I say, "we" and "old," I mean them in the most general senses: I am not old, nor would I really call most of my family "old," but when we get together, so much of the conversations revolve around "us" being "old" and how none of us can stand it.

My aunts and my mother complain about their faces getting wrinkly, my cousins and I complain about college being harder than high school and how we don't want to become adults.  My uncles and father complain about how they can't hear or see (well, no, they complain that everyone talks so quietly and writes so small) and my sisters complain that their children are growing up.

My question is this: is there ever a moment after our seventh birthdays when we're content to be swept along in the progression of time?  Holding on to our childhoods, fearing the discomforts of what's to come...or, like when we're kids, wishing we were older, with big-kid privileges?

Or, better question: is there a way that a person can just learn to be happy where they are, knowing that they aren't going anywhere faster than sixty-seconds in a minute, and that's how it's always going to be?  I feel like, after the hustle to get to college and the scramble to feel like an adult, I've reached a point where I'm getting sick of looking ahead, and bored of watching my back.  I know there were high times and hard times in the past, and I know there are more of both to come.  I don't think dwelling on either of those eras of my life is very productive for the moment in which I am actually living.

I firmly believe I'm only as old as I want to be.  (Of course, you're going to tell me that that's because I'm 21).  My body may deteriorate slowly, and I may not be able to do the things I used to, and I may not enjoy them.  But every phase of life can be full of excitement and...well, life.  Sometimes, I'll see it immediately, and other times you might have to look around a bit.

Insecurity about your age is one of the worst kinds of insecurity, since it is the hardest to even pretend to control.  When you're insecure about your body weight, you can eat healthier or exercise.  When you're insecure about your singing voice, you can take lessons, or lip sync.  When you're insecure because you're too old or too young, you can't change to improve your confidence--you'll only act more foolish if you try--so you end up worrying about it constantly.  Why not work to let it go?

That turned into a rant.  Scwhoops.

But anyway, back to my family and Christmas.  We're not all together this year, which is upsetting, I think, to everyone.  For some of us, this year has been full of pains and fears, and we wish we could have each other to bring us out of them.  For others of us, it's been a really great year, and we want to get together to celebrate.  But for all of us, our desire to be with family this year is not being wholly fulfilled, as we're all celebrating Christmas in our own abodes around the country.

It almost doesn't feel like Christmas because of that.  I'm scared it will be just like any other day.

But I get to see my brothers, my aunts, my uncle, my mom, my niece, my sisters and their families, my grandmother, and her caretaker.  It will be a full room tomorrow, as we gather around the tree, opening presents.

You know, I hate the commercialization of Christmas, and I refuse to buy meaningless gifts for people just because 'tis the season, but there really is something...strangely magical about sitting together with hoards of family, opening gifts and stockings, and eating eggs and sausage.

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes.


<3 spadeALLcross