Now that my children are bigger, life is less hectic, but a whole new aspect of Time has been revealed. I used to feel that all Christmases were, essentially, the same. They were stable, unchanging, predictable. But children change at such a faster rate than adults do. While my husband and I are still mostly the same as we have been for decades, our children are different beings than they were just a few years ago. Where is that adorable toddler boy who called everyone and everything “Dada?” And where is that constantly smiling baby girl would not sit still for a second? Sometimes I miss them so much.
So now Christmas, which for a time felt very much like a chore, feels like an incredibly precious and rapidly diminishing commodity. You only get so many of them, and every one of them is different. The Christmases of today are not the same as the ones of yesteryear, no matter how we cling to our traditions. I am learning to treasure each one, because there will never be another like it, and there will never be as many as we might wish to have had.