Wednesday, November 12, 2008

I get like that sometimes

I remember when I was a small child, every Thanksgiving (that I can remember at least) was held at our house. Relatives would come and go, in a rush to get to as many different gatherings as they could cram into a day. It never bothered me; there's not even anything in particular which sticks in my mind outside of a few random images. To tell you the truth Thanksgiving never meant that much to me. What does stick with me, though, is the memory of getting up from the table in those days and thinking, "That's it...it's now officially Christmas."

Like most every child I enjoyed Christmas, though not for the rampant commercialism. I'm not going to lie and say that the prospect of new things didn't excite me, but I just liked the fact that it was the one time a year that my whole family, well my mother's side of the family, got together in one place. Everything would be filled with a positive energy, and my memories of those years past are full motion videos in my mind. I recall, for instance, that this was the setting in which I saw "The Princess Bride" for the first time. See what I mean?

But, actually, that entire story is not even the point of the blog. No, I somewhat wasted your time with it in order to tell you this story:

Every year, when the gifts had all been unwrapped and the final person had left, I would go to bed and lay awake for what seemed like hours fearing the prospect of the next day. I was now, for all intents and purposes inside the mind of a child, at the furthest point between two Christmas's. New York to Paris. I would begin to think that I hadn't actually lived in the moment quite enough - that I had taken this last month for granted and now it was gone for an entire year. And so, when the following Thanksgiving rolled around and I got up from that table, I would begin to try hanging on to the random happy moments that occurred during the Christmas holiday. The trouble was, I could never seem to keep it up for very long. There were always too many other things going on for me to stop and appreciate what was going on around me, and I was without fail left with the same feeling at the end of every December 25th.

I've always tried to hold on to moments too much, and as a result I've always been overly wistful. And that's how I feel right now about a few certain things.

That was the point of this blog. I could go on...for a while. But I won't. Thanks for reading this far. Let me know what you think, because I'd like to hear it.

And don't worry, they won't all be this long.

1 comment:

May said...

I never want good times to end either.