Christmas Circa 1998 – pictured is Me, My Mom and Little Brother
Two decades of life have gone by since that Christmas morning. Nineteen more Christmas mornings have passed. A High School Graduation. A Wedding. More jobs than I could count. The birth of my oldest son followed by the birth of my youngest. Funerals. Anniversaries. Triumphs. Failures…..
Sometimes it’s good to stop, take a moment and simply remember; to slow time to a crawl and relive those moments that have passed so suddenly.
I didn’t know that Christmas Day in 1998 what the next 7,305 days would bring any more than I know today what the next 7,305 will bring. What I can do is hold the memories from these days as holy. Learn from the failures, relish the triumphs, and
be better for them both.
Holidays
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 – 1882
The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;—
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;— a Fairy Tale
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.