Season's Greetings

 Tomorrow we will sleep in.

That's the plan, anyway.

Tonight we are neither on guard nor on our best behavior. There will be at least four cheeky arguments over which holiday movie is the one WE ALWAYS (or WE NEVER) watch on Christmas Eve. (It's NOT Waking Ned Devine, no matter what my husband says.)

Santa's workshop - also known as the downstairs guest bedroom, where parental elves have toiled into the wee hours on the 24th day of December for the last two decades – has finally experienced the sluggishness of an aging demographic. 

There aren't mountains of gifts to sift through anymore. There is nothing to assemble. Any wrapping we might do is quite actually the work of but a moment. 

(There's plenty of time for wine).

I count myself fortunate that this shift to something smaller hasn't resulted in big or hard feelings. 

Not only have our children matured beyond the stage of development where they are salty that Santa’s magic has always been connected to their parents by cartoonishly visible nylon strings, but we Middle-Agers are salty that we awaken before dawn, whether we want to or not, without any impish joy.

They wake up slowly, wanting warm liquids and breakfast before commencing a round-robin style gift delivery they see as tradition.

“Did you know some people just go all in … they just find their names and start shredding?” my daughter says when I ask her to tell me her favorite part of Christmas morning. “I love that it takes us all day to get through the same amount of presents others tear through in minutes. It’s just nice.”

And she misses what we all miss: Grandpa setting up his toy trains under the tree, and Grandma nagging him to “let the kids play engineer, for goodness sake!”

For all the things we lose in this life, there are so many things still to find.

For instance, I find myself in a new camaraderie with strangers in snippets of overheard conversations. 

I want to high-five the man at the jewelry store shopping for a gift for his daughter who is finally home for the holidays. 

I want to hug the lady at the supermarket who was buying a sweet treat for a loved one in hospice. 

I can reread every letter my kids wrote to Santa from memory as I walk past the families waiting in line at the Shopping Mall’s North Pole.

I am grateful my girl is home. And that we will talk late into the night. I will rejoice that for the brief time between now and New Year, she will drive her brother anywhere he wants to go; and he won't drive her crazy. 

It seems like every Christmas we've ever shared is playing on a loop. 

I feel so lucky I want to knock on wood. 

By the time we are ready to sleep again, we will have laughed, cried, and chatted late into the night with the favorite members of our far-flung families. We will have heard old stories and told some with details that seem entirely new. 

We won't want the season to end.