I think I do a fairly good job of taking moments out of each day to be thankful for all that I have. Sometimes that thankfulness gets lost in the chaos of the day, but it’s a rare day that I don’t look around and thank God for all He as given me and remember just how close I came to never being able to have these precious little girls.
I don’t know if it’s the season, my ridiculous level of sensitivity, or hormones (probably a combination of the three) but I was feeling particularly grateful and almost wistful today.
One of my favorite Christmas songs is “A Baby Just Like You,” on the John Denver and the Muppets Christmas album. More than anything, it is a lullaby to a baby and a thank you to that baby for the wonder and joy that he brought into the lives of those around him. I think it’s a feeling all parents can relate to. We spend our childhoods engulfed in the magic of the season, and then when we have kids of our own, we are transported back to that land of enchantment. The only passport needed is the wonder in a child’s eyes.
Anyway, there is a simple line in this song, “Merry Christmas little Zachary, Merry Christmas everyone.” When Magoo was a baby, I sang this song to her at Christmas, replacing the name of Zachary with her name, and I did the same last year when my Goosie was a baby. And now this year, I sang it to Baby Girl. (We do already have her name picked out.)
I sang this very simple lyric to my baby girl, and I was overtaken with emotion. All of a sudden, I was so thankful for the memories. Memories are a precious gift, but when you are in the years of baby bonnets and training pants, you often spend more time living the ones you are making than looking back on those already created. But at this point, I realized just how special it is that I have this memory of a song I sang to my little girls when they were babies and now I am continuing that on with yet another one. None of the girls will remember this, but I will never, in my entire life, hear that song again without the thought of rocking one of my little ones.
And I think memories are an important part of the season. It’s hard to spend much time in the Christmas spirit without looking back wistfully at years past. We celebrate all that we have and all that we are given, but Christmas has a special magic about it that allows us to look back on times and loved ones lost and see it through a grateful lens rather than just the lens of sadness.
That particular Christmas album, the Muppets one, is and always has been my favorite of all Christmas albums. It’s actually the only Christmas record I remember listening to as a child. (Yes, I am old and listened to records as a child and even had my own kiddie record player.) And I know that’s a large part of why it’s my favorite. Sure, it has the perfect blend of sentimentality and liberal heart bleeding, but it’s really the memories. I remember screaming “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” and I always thought Miss Piggie was so funny. The Muppets’ “Deck the Halls” was the only version I ever really even knew existed for years.
And so what I am trying to get at in this round about, less than straight forward way, is that this season, I am going to be grateful for all of the seasons past that I have experienced. I’m going to be grateful for the excitement of coming downstairs on Christmas day to a room full of presents (Santa really treated us well,) and I’m going to be grateful for the first Christmas after I had started college and how comforting it was to be back in the comfort and familiarity of what I had always known. I’m going to be grateful for the last Christmas I got to spend with one of the dearest people in the world to me, and I’m going to be grateful for the first Christmas that I got to spend with my husband. I’m even going to be grateful for the Christmas I spent barely breathing in the hospital with pneumonia, and the one that found me sitting on a chair sobbing in the Meijer’s Christmas aisle fearing that I would never know what it was like to eat the Christmas cookies for Santa and see the look of wonder in the eyes of my old child.
Because the holidays are about all of that. They are about life where we are, who we are at the moment. And if we look hard eno0ugh, there are blessings in all of those memories.
Right now I am so thoroughly blessed to be living the holiday dream with two little ones and another on the way. But one day I will look back wistfully on these days as Magoo is leaving for college, or the Goose is spending her first holiday away from home.
But for now, I want to enjoy it and live every moment of it, knowing that for better or worse, these days will not come around again.
