Songs and smells and sounds can transport me to a different time and place.
This time of year I am especially sensitive. The sounds of Christmas carols, and the smell of Christmas trees mixed with cinnamon instantly bring me back to my home growing up. The feelings of warmth and comfort and love come flooding.
This time of year brings on a whirlwind of emotions and tears are always close to the surface. I am filled with a profound sadness that I'll never have another one of my mom's Christmases, a yearning for yesteryears and nostalgia with the past. But my heart is also swirling with hope and love and joy for the future and the gifts each day will bring. Christmas was my mom's favorite time of year, only challenged by her birthday month! She reveled in transforming the house into a winter wonderland. She loved to gather her friends and family around the table to break bread (and drink lots of wine). She made the season magical and was able to recreate that feeling of awe you had as a kid on Christmas morning. My heart swells when the memories come back and to this day I can't hear "I'll be Home for Christmas" without choking up.
I desperately want to give that to my boys. I desperately want them to be excited to come home from college into the warmth of their childhood home. I want them to get giddy for Christmas morning long after the excitement of Santa has disappeared. I want them to get excited to put up their own Christmas tree when they start their own families and thoughtfully place the ornaments their father and I gave to them over the years. I want them to embrace the legacy that my mom passed onto me and I pass down to them. I want to be their link to the traditions of the past and hope with my heart that they will carry those same traditions forward -- that way my mom's magic lives on throughout the generations.
I think this is the first year that the excitement in my heart is back and boy how I've missed it!
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