Welcome 2022

 

Hello all.  A quick update-all 4 of us in the Thorne clan our healthy and have no major health issues.  My latest visit at Stanford last week was routine & ordinary with a  positive outcome and I’ll have my next appointment in 6 month via “Teladoc”.

At this moment there is only one unusual thing going on in our home.  My Christmas decorations are still up!  I usually take them down right away on New Year’s Day as soon as we finish breakfast, and more importantly I usually cannot wait to take them down.  But this year, I’m in no hurry.  I’m ok if they stay up another week or so.  I’ve never had this feeling of not wanting to take the decorations down on New Years day before.

Sure, I’ve not looked forward to schlepping all the boxes in the house & carefully packing up each item, making sure the manger that my mom bought the year I was born is carefully packed back in the same container for next year’s unveiling, placing the Styrofoam igloo my grandmother made carefully in the box surrounded by a few of her other ornaments that I wanted after she passed away, and wrapping each house in my village up carefully, ensuring that they make it to next year.  Then persuading my family to haul all of the said boxes down to our storage shed where they will stay until after Thanksgiving.  It’s tradition.

But this year, I’m enjoying the magic of the lights on the Christmas tree in the early hours of the morning before the kids wake up, sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket with my bible and coffee.  I like when the lights in the village on the shelf under our counter are turned on the village seems to come to life.

As I lay in bed this morning contemplating that I didn’t really feel like taking the decorations down today and then acknowledging this was the first time I’ve felt this way, it dawned on me that perhaps the reason why is that I know have a 17 year old.  What this means is that I only have 1 more Christmas guaranteed (God willing) that she will be home for Christmas.  Sure, she may come back to visit from wherever life and the Lord decides to take her…but she might not.  So next year is my last -guaranteed Christmas with her home, snuggled in her bed on Christmas morning while Scott prepares the morning coffee and I bake our Christmas cinnamon rolls. 

And so if I want to cling to this Christmas season a little longer, if I want to delay the tucking away of our Christmas magic for another day or week, that is ok.  Time won’t stop, the minutes, hours and days will continue to fly by at warp speed as they seem to once my kids hit their teen years. But the Christmas decorations and their representation to me of hope, family, love, peace, kindness and joy will remain and I’ll soak them up as long as my family allows and do my best to continue to cherish the meaning of Christmas throughout the year, even when these decorations find their way back to the shed until November 25, 2022.

Happy New Year!