Friday, December 7, 2007

Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day

Time is an odd thing. I don't know if you ever noticed, but it doesn't stop. Thanksgiving was already two whole weeks ago. We are in the thick of the Christmas season. Lights are strung across mall ceilings and every department store plays "Deck the Halls" behind the voices of bustling Christmas shoppers. Sales! Pushy peddlers! Did you know the Leo diamond is the most beautiful diamond in the world? Or so says the nice gentleman at LeRoy's Jewelers who was either bored or really thought I had $6700 in my red polka-dotted purse to shell out on a sparkly ring (with 6 more cuts than a regular diamond! See how it glitters in the light? Uh, not really. Do you want to try it on? No, thanks. It looks better on! The only way I am putting that ring on is if Mel Gibson is offering it to me on one knee).

Monday I walked around a housing development at 9 o'clock, the cold air filtering through the knit of my gloves. I stopped in front of a house completely covered in white icicle lights as Frank Sinatra began singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" on my iPod. As I watched the house, I imagined cars pulling into the driveway and parking on the street, walking up to the door in knee-length coats and red gloves, a woman opening the front door in an apron and revealing a warm world lit with candles and smelling of gingerbread. Instrumental Christmas music flowed out of the house and voices rose in greeting as desserts were presented to the hostess as a thank-you offering. And as I stood there on the sidewalk, Frank Sinatra singing, "Through the years we all will be together," I thought about the Christmases past, with youth group and church and family. How different it'll be going home to a house I've only known for 4 days and a church who forgets my name.

Time is an odd thing. I never thought Thanksgiving would come, but it has, and is passed. Christmas break seems so far away, but in two weeks I'll be home with the semester behind me. Time keeps going. Sometimes I feel like something will never come or never end, yet somehow I end up on the other side of it looking back at it, wondering how I got through it. I just can't wait to be on the other side of this semester. TWO MORE WEEKS!

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