Christmas All Over Again. And This Time It's a White Christmas.

It's the day after Christmas, and like many days I have that feeling I get when I'm on a plane and the I've just felt the wheels leave the ground: It's all out of my control now. And I love that feeling. If I've left the iron on, well, the apartment and everything I own is just going to burn down. And I ease my seat back (but not too much to upset the passenger sitting behind me) and order a Bloody Mary and enjoy the ride.

It's already snowing like crazy. Today the Christmas festivities continue, or as Baxter calls it, the Christian Shopping Season. The girls (and their doggie companions) are taking the train in, then the subway. I'm making bread dough, the first of many goodies I'll hopefully turn out in the oven today. (We make our own bread. It's cheaper than the good store bought bread, and like gardening, connects you in a small way to the natural world.) A chicken has been marinating in the refrigerator since last night. The Christmas lights burn against the cold. (We hang Christmas lights in the apartment all year 'round. The tree at first seemed startled by this, then comfortably happy about it.)

I have so many things that are calling me--plays to read, a class to flesh out (sorry, folks, still don't know exactly what we'll be doing next semester; my advice is to order a Bloody Mary and sit tight), plays to write, novels to read, and it would be really nice if the Economy would let up on me just a touch and send a little work my way.

But today that's all on hold again. I'm taking off into a snow-filled day that, thanks to a blizzard that's casting its soft blanket over all, is bereft of any of the annoyances of modern life. When nature and family intersect, joined by food and love, it's Christmas all over again.

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve, a bit after 10:00, and I find myself engaged in my usual Christmas Eve ritual. I am the last one up (even Bob's in bed; he usually waits for the last one to slip under the covers before he flops down with a grunt on the old sleeping bag he uses for a bed and quickly starts snoring.)

Sue's on call, and wanted to get some sleep in case she has to get up in the middle of the night. The apartment is lit by the tree and some strands of Christmas lights we have strung about: over the kitchen window, across the front windows, and on the Japanese screen in the living room. My feet are propped up on a coffee table, and there's a glass of port next to them. A Christmas sugar cookie, just baked and half-eaten, lays next to me on the couch.

After all the craziness of what my buddy, Baxter, calls the Christian shopping season, it always turns into just about the most quiet night of the year, doesn't it? All I hear is the wind roaring outside, sounding just like the Red Line down the hill, and making me once again feel so appreciative of this apartment that is so safe and strong.

It's still pretty early. In other times it would be long past midnight and I'd be sitting next to a dying fire. Al was always a tough one to keep in bed on Christmas Eve, the excitement wiring her and bouncing her out of bed with every excuse in the book: she had to go to the bathroom, she was sleepy, she heard reindeer. You always had to be good and sure she was asleep before you could start filling stocking to make sure you wouldn't be accosted by a little Cindy Lou Who. Here we have a fireplace but it's gas, and Sue and I are so cheap we don't ever use it, feeling it's a waste of expensive fuel. The Native American Christmas stockings we bought in Arizona are hung there. Just this morning we were awaken by the doorbell, rung by the FedEx man who delivered the brass hooks from Amazon.com to hang them. With that, the last of the Christmas decoration was complete.

Tonight we had a simple dinner of stuffed shells Sue prepared last night. My old boss called and left voice mail, wishing me a merry Christmas, and to say he was thinking of me. I thought that was such a nice gesture.

We--well, I--made Christmas cookies. I've never made Christmas cookies in my life, but this really was Sue's first real Christmas in a long time, and she kept coming up with things she wanted to do, and baking cookies was one of them. Who could say, no? There are now three plates of Christmas cookies on the kitchen counter, and I'm not sure what we're going to do with them now. They're like the zucchini in the summer; who can use that many squash or cookies?

And tomorrow, if Sue isn't out on a case, we'll get up and have coffee and open our presents and then have pancakes, apple-cured bacon, and beer. Or I will. Sue's on duty, and can't drink. But I love a glass of beer for breakfast with a big stack of pancakes. You don't believe me? Don't knock it if you haven't tried it. And later, good buddy, John, will come by with what he said are a couple of pounds of fresh Cape Cod scallops, and the girls will arrive around 2:00 and there's a seven-plus-pound chicken marinating in soy sauce and honey and garlic right now in the 'fridge that will be stuffed with Chinese sausage and chestnuts and sticky rice. Some people have asked me how I'm doing being laid off. I try not to think about it, wanting to enjoy these holidays. I tend to take things one day at a time, and face what comes. And if it's something nice, like Christmas, well, I guess that's my good fortune, isn't it?

Happy Birthday, Alice...I miss you

If Mom had lived, she would have been 91 today. That's getting up there, but 68 was too young to go. Especially the way she went. Lung cancer that spread.

It's a hard day sometimes, even though it was 22 years ago she died (she died a couple of months short of her birthday.) It's just hot-wired into you that today was her day, and that Christmas was always extra special. For about the past eight years or so, the girls and I would go out to the Fatima Shrine in Medway and light a candle for her. I won't be doing that tonight, I know much to the girls' chagrin, but Medway is a long way to go and back on the roads the way they are now at night. Things change. Parents live and die. Parents break up. Dads move. Sometimes it's a hard life and a lot of tears are shed, but losing Mom was one of the toughest things I ever went through, and you look back and think, I got through this, I can get through this other thing.

So instead, I have her picture next to the Buddha by the fireplace, and I have a candle burning and I lit some incense in remembrance. I know she'd be shaking her head at that, staunch Catholic that she was. Years after her death I would talk to her. I mean, out-loud. I'd walk down the street just discussing things with her. Crazy? No, it isn't. We don't realize the dead are all around us.

We don't cry enough in this country. We always have to go around smiling and faking happiness, laughing all the time like hyenas. Nobody can be as happy as most people want you to be. You'd have to be a blithering, drooling idiot to be happy all the time in this society. No wonder we're a nation of Prozac. Most times you can face your sadness and get through it. It's the only way to get through it.

Merry Christmas, huh? Yeah, it is. Christmas is about family; not the fat man squeezing down the chimney. It's about family, living and dead and spread all over the world.

And one of these days, maybe it will really sink in that we're really all one big family, but that's a stretch. It is my Christmas wish, though. And maybe someday I'll get it. After all, one year I did get that Lionel train.