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.