A Winter's Tale

Peace on Earth. Goodwill to All.

Our holiday began with a celebration of the anniversary of my engagement to my beloved.

I was not (and have not) been feeling well; fighting off a nasty virus. So that evening I was probably not in good shape. However, my beloved, always one to rise to any occasion created a ceremonial blessing for our rings and wrote out a lovely prayer.

I had Christmas eve off and this was our Christmas with the kids. It was a nice morning, calm and relaxed. There was no feeding frenzy – Erin’s kids are really wonderful and so we all enjoyed opening gifts quietly. I hope my husband enjoyed his gifts.

He gave me diamond earrings – which was a total surprise, even though I was jokingly hinting at wanting them – I was really taken by surprise at this extravagant gift.

I ended up spending some time running around and unfortunately, we were not able to have a ‘special’ meal with the kids before it was time to send them back to their mom’s house. Erin and I had a quiet dinner together and then spent the night loving each other.

Christmas morning was nice – quiet and peaceful. We prepared to have friends over for a dinner. My son was also planning on stopping over.

It turns out our friend Bill was running behind schedule but we had a pleasant surprise to learn he was going to bring another friend (Ken) with him. We were also happy that one of our close friends from church, Dan, showed up as well to wish us a Merry Christmas. These are the types of celebrations I like best – where we have an open house and people stop in – it’s very relaxed and a lot of fun.

We had a nice dinner and sat down to watch the brilliant sleeper hit ‘Death at a Funeral; (totally hysterical) and then my son showed up. So all in all it was a nice day with great friends and family and lots of love.

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I have visions of a future – unfortunately, this future costs money. Typically is it about having a house somewhere out in the country in a ‘manor’ of sorts, where we have room to hold our loved ones should they decide to spend time with us. We have fireplaces, a big kitchen and a nice property. I have dogs, cats, a barn, horses and sheep. I want a working farm – I want a place away from everything where I can focus on being creative in whatever form that takes.

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I am not trying to say I am not happy. This is a ‘vision’ not a reality. I get tired of the rat race. I get tired of plodding along through life and the work-a-day doldrums that end up colouring every other aspect of my existence. Perhaps it is selfish to want such a life and perhaps it’s not the life my love wants to lead (and this does indeed matter to me – for I don’t want to do this without him by my side) – but like me – I think he too would be happy to have such a life. We were outside after the snow had fallen the other night – just us in the total hush of the night, newly fallen snow all around and he turned to me and told me that this was how the world was suppose to be: quiet.

I couldn’t agree more.