The Mysteries

Tonight driving home weary and fatigued, I remembered what excitement a night like this could bring when I was a boy.  Dark fell early, so we all stayed out as the sun went down and after, the colored Christmas lights appearing in the dusk.  The cool day turned cold, the air falling through our flannel shirts and sweatshirts touching the bare skin of our heads and ears and necks first, feeling the chill.  Everything seemed to glow and we could feel Christmas around the corner.  We played at nothing, made up games, marveling at the coming mysteries.  Then someone's dad would whistle or a mother would call a name and one by one we would head to our houses now wanting to beat the cold.  Inside my own house, my father would have started the fuel oil heater that looked like a big Wurlitzer jukebox in the hallway.  I would go and sit beside it while my mother made our dinner still in the clothes she wore to work that day.  My big Weimaraner would come to lick my face.  The Christmas tree was lighted and stood by the window with its big lightbulbs, red and green and yellow and blue.  We always used the silver strands that we called icicles and big, colorful glass globes, and some years we might flock the tree with something from a spray can that came out like snow.  I felt warm inside and out.  Everything was different.  Everything was special.

But tonight, I would not be playing outside with my friends.  Exhausted, I had gone to the grocery store to buy something to cook--an avocado, tomato, garlic, organic skinless chicken thighs, broccoli, and jasmine rice.  I would cook my meal and eat it in front of the television watching what now passes for the news before I had a scotch and tried to read for awhile.  There will be much to do tomorrow, and after that as well.  Still, dinner will be good and there is the wine, I tell myself.

But. . . whatever happened to the mysteries?