Christmas Reflections

I really loved Christmas this year. I flew to Portland and have been enjoying a whole week with my family and extended family. I will fly back to Santa Barbara on Sunday, just in time to make my usual Church service, which is cancelled this week. My flight arrives in the middle of the one service they are having. I obviously won't hit everything, but I'll hit some of the highlights.

This is the first time I've seen my brother Nathan since he turned 21, so I got to have a few drinks with him. I introduced him to Rum and Coke, Pina Coladas, and sent him back to college with Rum to spare. Happy New Year Nathan!

My father recently digitized some of our old reel-to-reel family videos and put them on DVD. The videos started with my parents' wedding. My grandmother asked them if they were thinking "will this work out?" My mother's answer was somewhat striking to me. She said back then people generally didn't think about that. They went into it knowing it was a lifelong commitment. As I'm hitting the point in life where my peers are starting to get married, I wonder which ones will last. I hope that they all will, but statistically speaking it is very unlikely that all of them will. It saddens me to know that marriages that fall apart are just as common as marriages that last in America. I also realized that my parents were my age when they got married.

Another thing I noticed about the videos is that there were a lot of videos of me. Just about every semi-major step in my life up to age three was caught on film. My two younger brothers got progressively less. I'm sure that's quite common for first children, but it seems too bad. If I'm ever a father of multiple kids, I hope I make the effort to take plenty of pictures and videos of all my kids, not just the first one.

As a closing thought, I am realizing that Portland really isn't my home anymore. I spent a week here for Christmas. There is a good chance that I will not be back before Christmas next year. Similarly, I may not see some of my extended family again until Christmas next year. Up until now, I've always been back in Portland at least twice each year. Throughout college I still spent about four months out of every year living in Portland. It's a little hard realizing that I'm now past that point in life.