That old feeling

Happy new year everyone! The presents are opened, the cookies eaten, the champagne drunk, the ball dropped and perhaps, in some cases, the tree already packed away to the attic or thrown to the curb, as the case may be.

The end of the Christmas season is always a little depressing for me because there isn't much to step into the cold, dark void that it leaves behind. Back to work or school and slogging it out until spring is the lot of most of us.

When I was a kid, our family always went to my grandparents' house for Christmas (in fact, for just about every holiday but Christmas for sure). When it was inevitably time to go, I would fall victim to an uncomfortable feeling of melancholy and dread at the thought of leaving, wanting to stay a lot, or even just a little, longer. "Don't go home," Meem and Gramps would always say sadly knowing, of course, that we must. It was part of the farewell ritual.

My grandparents would walk out to the car with us and then stand at the top of their front steps. They lived on a hill and dad didn't like to make the left turn into traffic from the bottom of it so he would drive up the street, over one and then down that street to make the turn from there. Thus, we would always drive past their street again and look back up the hill to their house. They would always wait for us to go by so there was the requisite slowing down, horn honking and waving followed by miles of me sitting in the back seat fighting that uneasy feeling.

Those days are long gone of course but, in my mind's eye, I see Meem and Gramps standing there at the top of the steps, waving. I like to think that they are standing there still, waiting to welcome us back.

For the past three-and-a-half decades we have always had Christmas at our house. This year, however, we spent Christmas with our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter and had a great time. Ashton took about seven hours to open her presents, apparently needing to savor each one before moving on to the next. The rest of the week flew by enjoying a host of activities not the least of which was watching Ashton's favorite movies. We found Nemo daily, sometimes twice a day. We cheered on Shrek, Shrek 2 and Shrek 3 (pray God this is all there are). Shark Tale, Toy Story, Ratatouille, you name it and if Pixar made it, we probably watched all or part of it. Say what you will about TCM but at least the characters are human!

Anyway, we had a wonderful week that went by way too fast.

On Tuesday, we packed the car and headed for home. Missy, Matt & Ashton walked out with us to say good-bye. Since their townhouse is an end unit, we drove down the parking lot and then up and around so that we went past them again standing at their front steps. Of course, there was the requisite slowing down, horn honking and waving.

And suddenly, I felt an old familiar feeling all over again.