Driving today. The sun is bright, but the air is cold. November in southern Wisconsin and the cranes are figuring out its time to go while the rest of us start to hunker down.
Thoughts of Christmas long ago. The excitement of the times. The lights over the street in downtown Wausau. The color pages of the J.C. Penney catalog where all the toys were. Hoping it would snow so we could make some money shoveling the neighbor’s sidewalk. Wet clothing from playing in the snow and the smell of my mom’s homemade fruitcake.
Back and forth I go from the past to the present. The present is busy, a working time for those who serve the Church. Arrangements, schedules, so many things to do. The past beckons with something simpler, more idealized, a world where people sang carols from the heart and it was okay to believe in Santa Claus.
The cold winter nights seemed so much easier then. Each one marked not the collapse at the end of a busy day so much as the progress towards that day, Christmas day. I discover in the autumn of my life that I still want to open a box with a toy inside. I still crave a piece of fruit cake spackled with butter. And oh, how I miss the orange in my stocking and the wonderful slippers my grandmother knit for us each year.
Christmas is a place in time, and I want to go back there, just for a moment, and be a kid again. I want to see family long gone. I want to be with my friends on the block where I grew up. I crave the wonder of those days. They were not perfect, but somehow, they seemed better than now.
Ah, the daydreams of a middle-aged man with a life of responsibility! My calendar calls and I snap back to work. Still, to be a child again, pajamas with feet, eyes locked on the boxes under the tree, corny movies on TV, and so much hope. I would do it again if I could. But, for now, there are only echoes and I cup my ear to hear them because their sound brings life to me, the pleasant dreams of older age that even if they seem sloppy and sentimental seem to mark the return of wonder, and how I need such wonder in my heart and soul as I keep on walking all the way Home.
The Beautiful Path 