The cool of the night before Christmas.
Friday, December 25th, 1998
So this is Christmas, and what do I hear? John and Yoko in mp3 splendor in my earphones, as cold rain falls outside our Atlanta home. We’ve got the best of it, as any glance at the weather would tell you. The places where our friends and loved ones live–from Minneapolis to Curtis, Michigan to Seattle to Positively Columbus, Ohio are shivering tonight and, well, it feels cold to us.
And so happy Christmas. We hope you’ve had fun as well. or are having fun. Sam and I just returned from a wonderful evening of family-stuff at Jim and Rebecca’s, which followed an afternoon of just-the-two-of-us closeness as I helped slice potatoes and marinate a turkey for our family dinner tomorrow night. Sounds romantic, right? Well…yeah! Aside from traveling together, some of our most together moments come at times as innocuous as these. It’s a very cool part of being married: an overwhelming closeness from sharing the most seemingly simple experiences.
I find myself just closing my eyes for an instant amidst those moments, grabbing a mental snapshot, saying to my addled and often baffled brain remember this moment, this feeling, this place. And most often I do.
I think there are times if asked the meaning of life, I would answer: to collect a series of those remembered moments. To take them in, to play them back when you need to, to celebrate those sorts of instants.
Sometimes, music–often the trendiest of popular songs, the song of the moment, will help me store and recall these feelings. I could tell you the songs from the radio during the 1980-they killed-John-Lennon December, and the honeymoon-in-London Christmas in 1989. Then you can go way back and attach the Vince Guaraldi ‘Peanuts’ score to my late-sixties holiday (yes, I’ve always identified with the very-roundheaded Charlie Brown) and…well, you get the idea.
Holidays are sometimes supposed to be guaranteed manufacturers of these remembered moments. If they happen conincident with special days, fine, but I say get them where you can.
So I wish you–we wish you, a very happy holiday, and a new year filled with memorable moments.
By the way, ‘War is over, if you want it,’ John says.
