It’s November!  Welcome to the Christmas Season of 2018!  There’s Christmas music playing on the television set in my kitchen and I am in the mood to start the holidays.

The songs and scenes bring back memories of not only my childhood, but the years when I had young children of my own.  There have been nearly perfect Christmases and there have been sad devastating Christmases over the years.  But I have made it through, and I am here now, waiting for my grown children to come home for the holidays.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about this morning.  Home for the Holidays.  I remember my mother baking and cooking in the kitchen.  I remember my father putting up the decorations, the lighted Santa and Reindeer on the lawn, the creche in the living room window, and his attempts at untangling the wild frayed strings of Christmas lights for the tree.  I can almost smell the baking, I can almost hear my father singing along with Mitch Miller, I can almost reach back through time and enjoy a Christmas at Home in 1965.

Home for the Holidays has taken on a new meaning now that my children are grown.  They will be coming home to me now.  I will be the mother baking in the kitchen.  My husband will be the father stringing the lights on the house.  And as wonderful as it will be to have this holiday together, there will come a day when this too will become just a memory for them, as 1965 is to me.  One day they will have families of their own and my husband and I will be gone, as my parents are now.  This house that they grew up in will be the one they imagine when they think of “home.”  Our traditions, our special moments, will stay with them for their lifetimes as they make their own memories for their own children.  And so, it goes on.

Enjoy this holiday, take the time out of your busy hectic crazy schedule to remember that you are home and that someday, you will only be able to go Home for this Holiday in 2018 in your memories.

#homefortheholidays, #christmas, #holidays, #family, #memories

Theresa Dodaro is the author of The Tin Box Trilogy.  http://www.theresadodaro.com