nostalgia

No matter how old I am, I still remember the thrill of getting up on Christmas morning particularly when I was very young and still believed in Santa. I loved our bigger than life tree smelling of pine decorated with many ornaments, fat primary colored lights, glimmering silver icicles, garland and long strands of tiny glass balls wrapped around it. My eyes always grew huge looking at all the presents underneath it for my siblings and me. The first year after I moved back to DC, I invited friends over to trim my first tree and thought for sure I’d repeat the gathering each year thereafter; so much for plans. My collection of ornaments purchased annually for who knows how long were boxed up the January after that Christmas and have remained on the shelf ever since though I do still decorate.

This past week, something began needling me and I don’t mean of the pine type though I was pining something awful. I was nostalgic, longing for that thrill from back when. I found myself wandering amongst  dozens of decorated holiday trees in stores, gazing at the many shiny ornaments nestled in baskets beneath them when I was supposed to be running errands and just had to have one...okay two...ornaments that is.

However, there was something more. I leisurely drove to a town just outside of DC to a little store hoping to find something that I left behind on a previous visit because wanting it felt silly at the time. I rushed into that store much like I hurried down the stairs before dawn on Christmas when I was a child. My face fell, I let out a heavy sigh -- the box of baby sock monkeys was not in the spot where I last saw it. Still hoping, I searched the entire place and there on a shelf close to the floor they were! I was five again and the melancholy lifted.

What are you longing for? Seek and you shall find as the saying goes so…

keep your peepers open!®