It's our first one as a married couple, and the first time we have decorated our own tree. What do you think?
OK, so we went with the store-bought fakey kind, but we figured that since we will be spending alot of Christmases with our families, if we went for the authentic sapin de Noel we'd probably end up with a seldom-watered parched tree shedding needles all over the place. This way, we can still buy a real tree those years that we choose to, and have an artificial one for those years that we don't.
I've been thinking about time alot, lately. This year, we are doing Christmas with Nesrine's family, and going to the Ellard homestead for New Year's Eve. As we Ellard kids get older and marry into other families, I suppose this type of thing will occur more frequently, but it still feels a bit odd to not be home for Christmas. The last time I missed Christmas was the year I went to the Yucatan peninsula with some Montreal Friends. I think that was four years ago, but I may be wrong. I'm now decidedly into my third decade on this earth, and I can no longer say I "recently" entered my thirties. Already, my twenties are fading into the recesses of my memory so that I can no longer recall when certain things happened, exactly. When did I come to Ottawa? Was it five years ago?
It's odd, because I remember thinking the same thing a decade ago about my early teenage years during the eighties. What year did I first see "The Terminator" on video with Jason Ball? When did we move to Geraldton? What season was I the Assistant Captain for the Geraldton Goldminers hockey team? Was I in Peewee or Midget? The mundane details have tended to fade out first as I advance in years, but eventually, even those events from my late teens that at the time seemed so earth shattering --breaking up with Alison, doing basic training in Wainwright, Alberta -- have begun to take on a bit of a translucent quality in my mind's eye, as if I was watching the grainy footage of an old newsreel... I get the sense that I'm missing some of the detail around the edges, and just beyond the frame of the picture.
Some mind-blowing stuff has been happening to me lately that makes me realize how fast time is rushing by. First of all, I got back in touch with someone who was doing their Master's degree at the same time I was. He's now a PhD living in Toronto with a wife and kids. Realizing that was almost ten years ago floored me: Wait, I was in Graduate School almost ten years ago? It's true. The date 1999 on my MA confirms it: I started it in 1997. A friend of mine, whom I met as a bright, fiercely independent girl barely out of high school, who was so very cynical about love and relationships --she once called marriage a "social construct" -- will soon be a married woman. If you told me five years ago that she would be married by the time 2007 rolled around I would have laughed at you. But here we are: the wedding is in less than a week. I'm exceptionally happy that her and her husband-to-be, who is a real stand-up guy, are taking the plunge. It really is a great club to be in!
So time marches on, and the end of the year affords us all an opportunity to think about the time we have been given, and how we are spending it. Here's hoping I can spend more time with each of you in the new year, and in the many years to come.
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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