The Journey

Thinking back today to those years so long ago, I am reminded of the simple joy of New Year's Eve as a child; and the how it shaped my life. It had three things: a soup bowl filled with an ice cream sunday, a magic black and white picture featuring a huge sparkling crystal slowing heading towards my future, and two people who watched with me. There was only one couch. My grandfather always sat on the floor. It never occurred to me that this was not his place of choice.

Earlier that day as the minutes inched towards the new year, my excitement about my overnight stay was almost too much to bear. As I think back now as Nana, I am ever grateful that my grandparents lived across the road and threw the meadow. It was a short trip that has lasted a life time.

As I reflect on this moment, Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas In Wales comes to mind.

Listen to Thomas, just for a moment."Every Christmas was so much like another in those days..." There was Mrs Prothero's house fire, the "useful" and the "useless" present the Uncles and the Aunts.

Something happened to me between 6 and sixty. I understand that the excitement of Christmas, the gifts, the treats, the unexpected moments like Mrs. Prothero's fire were very much like the ice cream sunday on New Year's Eve. Very much like Dylan's Christmas. The ordinary becomes the extraordinary. It is this holiday magic-be it New Years, Christmas, Hanukkah, Three Kings Day, or Kwanzaa or any special family tradition, no matter how mundane or meaningless to others, that binds and strengthens us as we journey from grandchild to grandmother.