The Thrill of the Season

Look, I'm not proud of the picture, at least, not officially. The fact is, the season made me do it.

That's right-the season. What's worse, I was able to convince the wife and children (the grown up hairy kind) to participate in this offensive behavior in which we believe, several federal postal laws were-if not broken, severely bent.

I don't believe in all that dribble of 'the devil made me do it' or 'I don't know, I was raised by wolves,' or any of that other malarkey stuff that is laid out to justify crappy behavior. We go into stuff with our eyes wide open-except during this time of year. It seems this is the time of year that the wheels fall of, for good for bad. There are more suicides and more babies being conceived this time of year than any other. Just when you think its safe to go to your mail box and open 'safe' Christmas cards, you get something like this. It's like your driving in Iraq and an IED goes off next to your convoy as you drive, well, this is nothing like that but its the best I can do. You open this innocuous envelope and BAM! You have this exploding all over your shirt. You have to admit though, it looks good on the refrigerator. But lets look at it for a moment in its entirety.

Christmas is the second most holiest day in the Christian calendar, right behind Easter and way out in front of Columbus Day (this holiday just pisses me off but I appreciate the day off). Family and friends are fighting like aardvarks in the Spring, trying to gather in family reunions all across this country, fighting the weather and consuming gallons of coffee and cocoa to make the trips to grandma's house in time for Christmas Day football games. Trips that will be talked about for years as Herculean tribal tasks of repatriation and good times. People do two things this time of year; they get nicer or they flip you off in a parking lot vying for that parking slot right next to the store. It brings out the best and worst in people. I toyed, I must admit, with sliding into a handicapped parking slot for just a short run into the store. It was only going to be a minute-honest-I use to be with the government. But I didn't.

I like to go to the mall and just walk. I'm 51, soon to be 52. Sometimes, I still think I'm eighteen and try to do things that I shouldn't be doing, like playing football with the staff against our football team. Yep, that was a bad call. I think I tore my hamstring on the first play. Not wanting to curl up in a ball and suck my thumb on the first play, I played until the half and then claiming department chair duties, excused myself from the game. But I can still walk the mall. That now seems more my speed. Walking with my wife and watching her in her element. Joni could touch every garment in a mall and then start over. I have the knack of finding every chair and nesting until she is done. I even walk with my hands behind my back, just like the 'Old Ones' the 'Silverbacks' of our society. At 51/52 I know I'm pushing the age thing but its comfortable-really, strolling with my hands behind my back like I'm a rabbi from Oslo.

Well, there ya go. Look, there's a lot of stuff out there that causes us to leave the light on in the house so we don't see the Boogieman. The world, sometimes creeps into our lives with pain, suffering, cancer, infidelity, aging parents, lost jobs, unmet dreams. I think I have laid aside several dreams that will never take place-ever. Those are hard things to realize. But, and I truly believe this, there is a purpose to our lives. If you believe in a thing called 'god' you know what I mean. Even if you don't, there is a sense of destiny we all have in us. Just because A, B, and C happen, doesn't mean D will follow. Today, look out the window and see it for what it is, a new day. Sure, those things we have been dealing with for what seems like years, might still be there, but its our hearts that are different, if we allow them to be. Shakespeare wrote in Henry V 'All things are ready if our minds be so."

Take this day, this season, as an opportunity to have hope that whatever you are in, will be what we can have it be. Enjoy it for what it is, a fresh start-starting right now-one step at a time. Who knows, you may find yourself standing on the front porch in a diaper-and loving it.