Christmas Evening

Christmas, 2004, Las Vegas

I have spent a lot of Christmas mornings alone, but waking up alone on Christmas day can still be a little bit weird.  So is being home alone at Christmas' end.  It is both hollow and haunting, and one finds it difficult not to reflect with spiritual trepidation about one's aloneness.  It is not true, of course, for everyone.  I could simply say "I" and "me," but I'd rather universalize my feelings.  It is less lonely that way.  

I am exhausted tonight.  I went to my mother's for Christmas dinner around one.  I began setting up her computer while the ham and fixings finished cooking.  Everything went swell until it didn't.  First, I had to navigate my mother's passwords.  My mother does not honor them the way she should.  After trying ten or fifteen of them, I would be ready to give up just when the last one worked.  

At two we ate.  It was cold outside where we had set the table, but my mother had two heaters going and we fairly bundled up and the sky was clear and the cold sun shining, so we were pretty much o.k.  She made a simple dinner, but man, it may have been her best.  We were both pleased as punch as Hubert Humphrey was so fond of saying.  Then the neighbors began to show up, and for the next couple hours, we were entertaining.  I was the boy toy of the over eighty crowd.  Over eighty?  Well over.  The women ranged in age from 88 to 96.  I served them champagne and gave attention, and the girls stayed on until the darkness and the chill overtook us all.  Other neighbors stopped by as well having heard there was champagne.  It is a good thing I made my last minute liquor store run last night.  In between the cookies and champagne, I was running in updating my mother's new computer.  Her friends were all envious.  

I took over the Megaboom 3 speaker Q has gifted me and played some Pandora mixes from my phone while we partied.  The girls even liked the music, but I am an old soul and basically a woman, so that is no surprise.  But the chit-chat and the computer problems have worn me out and now, here at home with my first glass of scotch, I am ready for the couch.  What I'm ready for is cuddling up with my own true love, but whatever. As the song goes, maybe next year.  

I will make some small ham sandwiches tonight with the little rolls my mother sent home with me, so it will be like many Christmas nights of yore.  Tonight will be very cold, but tomorrow will be clear, and now with Christmas gone, I hope I will look ahead.  I have pulled out all my Leica gear and arranged it so that I know where everything is (for the moment) and may take to wearing one on my walks about town again.  Just get me that vaccine, and let's see what happens.  Yea. . . just get me that vaccine.