After no threat of snow for a month, Mother Nature picks
this weekend to bring us a White Christmas.
I’m scheduled to drive to Scranton to see my kid, along a
route that is notoriously dangerous in snow.
Unfortunately, I get very nostalgic this time of year, even during
the most painful times (such as Christmas 2012 after that whole debacle with
the poet.
I’m no less nostalgic this year, only I’m not completely
sure for what. Most of what made up Christmas is long gone for me, though yesterday
– after my weekly visit to our new office in Hometown – I strolled through the
town, passed the taverns the poet and I drank in a few times, and perhaps other
bars where she drank with other men going back to when she first lived there in
2003.
The shadows of our lives hover over this whole landscape, long
after they have faded into memories.
I look at her new videos, seeing her great joy (this week
she won a ribbon, if not the blue ribbon she had seen our former temporary boss
as, then something substantial, a real accomplishment, and in an area of her
life she loves.
I look at the Christmas displays, less here than in the ever-hopeful
Peninsula City, but formidable enough to bring out the Christmas spirit in me,
if only long enough for me to access the train.
Our poet was right back then. We need to live in the moment.
The past and future do not exist except in our imaginations, and not always
accurately recalled even.
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