Right On Cue

I've started this post half a dozen times.  I'm not sure exactly what I want to say.  I woke feeling happy and grateful today right on cue.  Cute Little Red was patiently waiting for his breakfast.  I took him some nuts, seeds and fruit, and he had his own feast.  He preferred the pear.  Gobbled every slice up.  Then I made the girls pancakes and bacon, and sang along to carol after carol.  Miss Bit had an impromptu sleepover last night.  I'm in a yes mood.  An up yo.  I sang as I cleaned up breakfast and made meatballs stuffed with fresh mozz for dinner tonight. They are beauts.  A crowd pleaser too when placed between a garlicky toasted hoagie.  Jess is coming over after work. There will be wine.  Dinner.  Games too perhaps.  Maybe a tear or two. The holidays are hard for her too, but that's her story to tell.

As the morning wears on, I'm feeling a tad sad and a bit nostalgic.  My Mom loved Thanksgiving.  It was her favorite holiday so I always find myself missing her more painfully right about now.  Right on cue.  She would have been at the market when it opened first thing this morning, and be busy in her kitchen right about now. She despised shopping and crowds and having to wait.  Patience was not one of her virtues, but she had many others that more than made up for the one lacking.  She'd come over tonight too.  Probably just for a little cheer because she'd be up at the crack of dawn stuffing that bird Thanksgiving morning.  Her table would have been set on Sunday.

It's been six years since we celebrated Thanksgiving at her table.  I cannot wrap my mind around that.  Right on cue time marches on and yet so much of my heart is filled with the past.  Longing, and not just for my Mom, but for other loved ones lost or not present for one reason or another.  Therein lies the sadness.  The down yo.

So as December is fast approaching, I'm reminded that the joy of the holidays is shared with the sadness.  In many ways both large and small it is the most wonderful, magical time of the year.  At times though, the traditions, memories, merriment make me melancholy and blue.  There is no other time of year that I find myself so often smiling through my tears.  Today is simply one of them.