Miracles

By dawn, the sky has turned the color of carbon paper.  I can hear thunder in the distance and the rain is coming down in sheets.  A dreary and dismal day, I think, already regretting last night's decision to put off the grocery store til today and wishing I'd had the good sense to have checked the forecast before turning in.  The downpour is supposed to last the entire day - what a small sacrifice it'd have been to shop last night - but what's done is done, no sense crying over spilled milk.

With Christmas just a day away, I inevitably start thinking about family, friends, lovers, the complete futility of regrets - can anything possibly be more useless than hindsight - and gratitude.  I wonder, just a little, about all the people who have come and gone in my life, where they are, how they are, how they're planning to spend the holidays.  Places and faces I haven't seen in decades come to mind and it strikes me how quickly and thoroughly we forget people and things when they're over.  We tame the most devastating and life altering events with time.  We recover from the worst setbacks and muddle through the hardest of losses.  We get over it or go through it and come out reasonably intact.  Even with all the empty spaces in our lives, what miracles we all are.

The drama of being young and worrying about what I would and wouldn't survive is behind me these days.  I loved riding the roller coaster until I didn't.  Now when I look back, I'm struck by how silly most of it was, how theatrical and melodramatic I made it.  Forlorn as it seemed then, I don't know a single soul who died of a broken heart even though at the time I was fairly convinced I would never love again, that all my dreams died with every breakup.  Age and experience bring a certain resolution, a calmness, a perspective that isn't possible when you're young and wild with hormones and imagination.  Real pain, real heartache, real tragedy don't waste themselves on foolish young girls with all their lives ahead of them.  We learn to walk as infants, then we re-learn as adults - one foot in front of the other 'til we get someplace real.

Still, the faces are clear, unlined and always young, just as we were then.  No gray hair, no frown lines, no chubby waistlines or liver spotted hands.  There was magic in being young and passionately in love but it wouldn't have done for every day.  At that pace, we'd never have seen thirty.

Christmas Eve day passes slowly and leisurely - I know the old black and white holiday movies by heart and am content to listen to them without actually having to watch - so the animals and I rarely stir from the bed.  It's our own tradition and it turns out to be a surprisingly peaceful one.   I do venture out but only to one of the numerous casinos - what amazing places these gambling halls are, no night or or day, never closing or even slowing down never mind acknowledging such a thing as Christmas - for a little sweet harmony from one of my favorite musical groups.  I visit with a few friends, take a few pictures, and leave early.

The doctor offers me a place at his Christmas table, as do a number of others who worry about people like me who are what they consider alone during the holidays.  I smile and decline as I always do, not able to imagine anything I'd rather do less but not willing to say so.  It's a kind gesture and a sincere one and while I appreciate the generosity of spirit, I'm not willing to give up a single day of being alone.  It's not so much bad memories of holidays that make me retreat - not even bad memories of family, come to think of it, I get a little further past them with each passing year - there's just no other place where I'm as comfortable or content and no other place where I have better company.

So another Christmas will come and go, quietly and blessedly uneventfully.  I look back with gratitude, a tiny bit of sorrow, and only a very small sense of loss because family - whether two or four footed - is what we make it.