outside my window are zany and beautiful and light up the encroaching darkness with a colorful resistance. I see them flowing in the wind and I remember what it was like as a child to drive through the night to see the decorations downtown and wind through the Wausau cold evening, face pressed up against the station wagon window, for the neighbor’s show.

I often measure my life in Christmases and although I sometimes feel my memory slip with the years I somehow remember details of those times long past as the old man staring back at me in the bathroom mirror drifts into childhood again and again. It’s a kind of curse to know what you know now without having the opportunity to relive what was good and amend where one should’ve known better. Too soon old we are and too late smart we become. Yet there is happiness as well.

I never wanted to completely grow up. I mean I had to to pay bills and do my work and have some kind of life but the whole idea of just leaving childhood somewhere back there forever just didn’t seem wise and certainly not fun. The clock is ticking and all my grade school friends are now grandparents, boy did that happen fast, and I know my days are numbered as well. Still, especially around Christmas, I wander back to those days and I can because I never completely closed the door on them. One of the best decisions I ever made.

There is a kind of refuge there for me, a certain magic. While each Christmas that passes reminds me of who has left us, how far away from home I seem to be, and the reality that one day I may be all alone around this time of year, I have a safety valve, an escape hatch.

Overwhelmed by the world. Aware of my responsibilities. Consumed with the care of others. I slip out, like a child quietly wandering through the house in the small hours, and travel back to days I can never recover but always seem to be just right around the corner. Gifts long land filled are fresh and new again. There is a kind of innocent happiness. All the old gang back in Wausau are alive and young and free of this weary world for a while. And I play without care for who is watching.

The busy season is ahead. Alms need to be given. Services need to be celebrated. The lonely and cold and aged and imprisoned need someone to help carry their load. This is life and I have no regrets. Still the lights are shining in the trees and bushes just outside my front window. The tree is lit and decorated. The snow will soon settle in over Sun Prairie and in small moments as real as the hand in front of my face I’ll fly back to different times, innocent days, and a world that seemed just a little while ago even as the calendar says otherwise.

Never grow so old that you lose your sense of wonder.