Not All Joy

Not All Joy

Christmas is, for the most part, my favorite time of year and has been since I can remember.  After the inevitable freak-out/fiasco over getting the tree to stand up just right, there was the breathless first moments when we got to see it standing free all on it's own before being handed ornaments one by one to be hung carefully with the most precious ones being placed by my mom near the top.  I used to think this was a pride-of-place thing, but looking back, I think it was more a "keeping them out of reach of cats and kids" thing.
And yes, as a kid, I used to take an inordinate amount of pride in my butt-ugly homemade/school project ornaments made out of construction paper, glitter, and glue.  What can I say?  When I was five, I thought the ability to follow a dotted line with scissors made me the shit.

I love Christmas music and pretty much all Christmas food and I love the sense of good cheer and singing and joy and laughter.  I LOVE buying gifts for people.  I freaking LOVE thinking up ideas of what so-and-so would like and wrapping it up and in some cases, I love seeing how they react because I am an awesome gift-giver.  I really enjoy wrapping presents with a cup of cocoa and A Christmas Carol playing in the background.  I even enjoy picking the right color ribbon and putting it on in an interesting way and curling it up because I am a freak.

But there's also some difficulties.

I'm not talking about the make-you-want-to-slit-your-wrists Band Aid song or getting preachy about how we're all celebrating and meanwhile, children are starving and people are homeless.  

This is more generic "my little bubble of the world" type problems.

I'm sad today.

I'm sad because I'm tired; I work retail and Halloween through New Year's is C-R-A-Z-Y busy.  My favorite thing is when you ask a customer "How are you today?" and they're all "I'm tired.  We've been shopping all day."  

Because you know what's more exhausting than shopping all day?  

Waiting on shoppers all day.

I'm sad because I have to work Christmas Eve - and not just work, but I have to work until 7PM and I want to be at my Dad's house by 7PM and that won't happen.

I'm sad because a friend of mine is fighting bone cancer and though he's insanely brave and tough, he's hurting and no one should go through cancer, ever.

I'm sad because I have allowed our friendship to drift into the "bumping into each other" status due to general busy life-ness and not making active effort to go hang out with him more in the past.

I'm sad because while I have so many wonderful memories of my mom, I tend to get a lot of grief attacks this time of year as well.  I will smell the first batch of homemade sugar cookies and the tears start falling without warning.  I will randomly remember a scene from Christmas Comes to Willow Creek and find myself smiling and remember my mom putting on a John Schneider country record and how we'd all sing along while cleaning house and my heart will ache to be able to talk to her while she made a pan of her special macaroni & cheese.  Nothing major.  Just to be able to talk about my day, to hear about the goings-on at her job, her plans for her next knitting project and my thoughts about whatever - anything.

I'm sad because there is never enough time.  

The weeks pass so slowly and the months go by so fast.

I'm sad because there is never enough time in a day and more importantly, there is never enough time in life.