The Best Christmas Ever...2009

I suppose if I had to pick the best Christmas ever, I'd pick this one.

I can't really say exactly why that was, because it wasn't any one thing, or any one event, but rather the culmination of so many of them and maybe I'll write more later and explain how they all came together, but right now I just have to say this has been the best Christmas I've had in years.

It was the year I went into Christmas with no expectations and wound up with so many surprises. Some good, some not so good. I never expected, for example, that my dad would lose the use of one side of his body and nothing I could have done, three days before Christmas, could have prepared me for that. Or likewise for the pure happiness of talking with him, every day, and hearing his coherent speech and knowing we really couldn't do anything until the MRI on the 29th. This was the year of every single day, for the last week plus, coming home to a different surprise on the doorstep. So many neighbors, and friends, leaving anonymous 'neighbor gifts' to the point that I told Alexi, at work, "maybe I've been nicer than I thought I was, last year", and the irony is, that was the year that Lainie moved and I'd vowed rather foolishly not to get to meet any of my neighbors at all.

This was the year I came home and tried to adjust the sound on my television...only to open the armoire and find out that my television was gone, and had been replaced by a 32" flat screen, HDTV, and I knew who'd done it and all they would say was, "Well, I've always really wanted a 1997 27" TV so I bought you a new one and traded you." This was the year of an incredible Christmas dinner with my Secret Santa family, and watching their kids having an incredible Christmas, never knowing (as they shouldn't) that dad is still laid off. This was an incredible Christmas, up to and including yesterday, when I slept late and got up and opened gifts over a pot of Earl Grey Tea, and loved everything.

This was the holiday that culminated tonight, in another dinner with friends. In a house where I don't live, per se, but where I've always felt so at home. And one of their house guests bid me adieu very europeonly and nobody has ever done that before, by kissing me on both cheeks. Oh, My (as Susan Sarandon said in Bull Durham, the movie). As if the night couldn't get any better, a little boy shouted out, "I love you!!! I love you!!!" as I left, and really, how much better does life get? My friend throughout the evening kept saying, "English, in English" because the entirety of conversation was in German. "Isn't that funny," observed He Who Kissed My Cheeks, "We all speak German except you. Usually we are the minority." And yet, throwing Frisbee (and very carefully, so as not to hit the tree, and loving every minute of it because playing with those kids is a highlight of any moment) with those kids, and just being there, in the midst of that family and with a wonderful friend, they could all have been speaking Icelandic and I'd still have felt as much at home.

This has been a fantastic Christmas.

So many things brought it to that point. I'm not sure which, if I had to point to any one, would have been 'it'. Maybe it was seeing Lainie, today. Or maybe it was the picture of her and her boys she gave me. Or maybe it was Holly, and Emannuel, and Sebastian. Or her cat, or my own animals, or the bottle of 'Poof!' "Animal Freshener: For the Very Coolest of Dogs" that Owen gifted Basil with. Or the innumerable plates of cookies, and candles, and neighbor gifts, that came my way. I'm not sure.

I just know it's been a very incredible holiday, and as I settle in tonight in front of my new, unexpected 'ginormous flat screen TV', in my zebra print 'blanket with sleeves' (see previous blogs re: white elephants), I just know that I feel very blessed to be just where I am, surrounded by the friends I have, and the place I live, and the animals who live with me, and the life I'm living.

It is not at all where I anticipated I would be, at this stage of my life.
But I would not trade it for anything in the world.