Time Travel Tuesdays: The Sensational Season

It’s another Time Travel Tuesday, gang, and we’re spinning the wheel of time back to December 18, 2004! This was the year that something particularly happened for my family not on Christmas, but on Thanksgiving, although I waited until that year’s Christmas column to discuss it in the column. It was a heck of a year…

December 18, 2004
The Sensational Season

Seven days. I can’t believe there’s just seven days left until Christmas. Seems like just yesterday we were carving up the Thanksgiving turkey (or even carving up the Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween). How is it that you spend so much time anticipating Christmas, and yet it finds a way to race up on you every single year?

And why is it that I feel it more this year, somehow?

Christmas is more than just a time of year, friends, it’s also a sensation. Sometimes you just feel things. When you go to the doctor, for instance, sometimes you know that, no matter how good you feel on your way in, somehow you’re going to wind up with a needle in your vein or a rubber glove poking around certain personal areas without even buying you dinner first.

Sometimes, the events around you can contribute to a mood. Let’s say one morning you wake up with a headache, find there’s a weird rash developing that you can only attribute to the new deodorant you’re trying, you’re down to your last three cornflakes in the bottom of the box, and on your way the car you smack your eye into the door frame. This is a day where you’d best just turn around and go back to bed, because you can sense it’ll be a bad one.

Then there are the days you can sense will be good. You make that last red light, there’s a message on your voice mail from somebody you really wanted to hear from, that guy three cubicles down who always tries to show you pictures of his Rottweiler is out sick — this will be a pleasant day.

Seasons are like that too. And I can feel this Christmas season more strongly than I have in a long time. I think it started on Thanksgiving. And I don’t mean that in the usual sense that I don’t consider the Christmas season as having begun until the Macy’s Parade is over and I’ve had my third slice of pumpkin pie. (Although that did happen again.)

This year was different for my family. My Uncle Scott lives in Cincinnati (the one in Ohio of all places) and hasn’t been down to visit in a few years. He hasn’t been down for Thanksgiving in an even longer time. He’s my grandmother’s youngest, and even though he calls every year, it always clearly breaks her heart a little that he’s not there.

This year, he was.

Everyone managed to keep it a secret from my grandmother, and my Uncle Renee helped plot. Once Scott and his family were there, in her driveway, they called Renee (who was not at her house yet) on his cell phone to give the signal. Renee called her and told her to go look outside. She did and, by all reports, the last thing Renee heard was “Oh my God!” Click! Dial tooooone…

The rest of the family filtered in, and it was an incredible Thanksgiving. For the first time in years my grandmother had all five of her children and all 14 of her grandchildren together at the same time. Oh yeah, there were pictures. And there was tons of food as always, and even my Uncle Wally’s children (who have a reputation for being slightly more rambunctious than a head-on collision between a truck hauling propane and a charter bus full of trial lawyers) didn’t get yelled at to calm down as much as usual.

Things have been good since then. Positive. I’ve spent this last week involved in various activities leading up to the wedding of my friends Chase and Jenny (which happened last night as you’re reading this, tomorrow as I’m writing it), and even the insanity and befuddlement of planning a wedding has felt great, like we’re all ramping up to something. Chase and Jenny, of course, clearly are — but somehow I feel like we’re all along for the ride.

And maybe there are a few other things going on right now that feel really special, like things are really falling into place.

Oh, there are still headaches. Shopping can be a pain, traffic can be murder. Right now I’ve got a slip in my pocket from the post office saying I’ve got a package someone needs to sign for and would it be more convenient for me to reschedule a drop-off for a time of day where everybody in the universe is at work and unable to sign for it or to personally pick it up at the post office, which conveniently closes right before everybody in the universe gets off work and would be able to make an appearance?

But you’re used to the headaches, the stress, the aches and pains. I’m not used to the happiness, the joy, and the sense that there’s something amazing in the air. That may be the difference, I think. The uber-PC “Holidays” carry the stress. Christmas carries the magic.

Seven days left.

Wish I could make it last longer.

Blake M. Petit invites you all to his website to read “Toyetic” ONE WEEK FROM TODAY. Contact him with comments, suggestions or more wrapping paper at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com.