My Twenty-fourth Christmas

It's a strange thing, being born on Christmas Day. My birthday is a day of incredible happiness for many people, and a day of incredible sadness for others, and for some, it's just a day. For me, it's Christmas; it's a day to spend with my family, a day to open presents and laugh and eat too much and watch A Christmas Story and/or The Muppet Christmas Carol at least once and nap after lunch. Lucky for me, it's also the day that I blow out candles on my birthday cake. It makes it extra special somehow. It's a day where I practically roll around in what makes me so fortunate the way Bond villains roll around in dollar bills.

It's not usually a day where I think. Generally, I do that in the days afterwards. I was born a week before the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one. Which means, my age and the year go together so closely that "The year 2008" and "The year I was twenty-three years old" coincide almost perfectly. It's a double-dose; I reflect on being a year older, and I reflect on the exchange of an old year for a new one all at once.

And so, just after my twenty-fourth Christmas, my mind is scattered out over my twenty-third year, over the year 2008. Everyone will remember that the year 2008 was the year the economy tanked, the year Sarah Palin became the most popular Halloween costume, the year Barack Obama made history with his sense of hope for the future. I will remember these things about 2008. But I will also remember what happened in my small life this year, and how I have changed.

In many ways, I'll remember 2008 as my first year as a grown-up. In 2008, I completed a year of teaching high-school English, and a year of being gainfully employed and paying my own bills and cooking my own food. It's still strange to think of myself as an adult.

I'll remember it as the year of live music. I saw more live music this year than I ever have before in a year, partially because I discovered that I love it. I also discovered that I love roller coasters, after having been scared of them since I was ten.

I'll remember it as the year I spent feeling as though my life is unstable. I think being in your twenties, being unsure of where you'll be or who you'll be with in the coming years, is hard for people like me. I don't like transition. I don't like it when I have to start over, I don't like it when I have to move, I don't like change, because it takes me too long to get used to it. Once I'm settled, once I know what direction things are moving, then I can start to be happy. But I know that I won't always work where I work, and I know that I won't always live where I live, and that bothers me. Not because I'm extremely happy either place, but because I don't know where I'll be in a year.

I'll remember it as the year of moving. This past summer, my parents moved out of the house where I grew up, a house that has housed five generations of my family, and I moved out of Chapel Hill to an apartment in Burlington to be closer to work. I miss the mountains, I miss living in a college town, I miss my old house...this was the first Christmas, the first birthday, that I've ever spent away from that house since my first Christmas ever, which also happened to be my first day ever.

I'll remember it as a year of funerals. This past fall, we had two deaths in the family: my great-aunt and my grandfather. Two more transitions. My great-aunt was really an extra grandmother; she spent Christmas with us. This was my first Christmas without her cackling at my brother when he teases her for being short. It was my first Christmas without my grandfather laughing his rumbly laugh in his chair with a glass of bourbon in his hand and a dog in his lap.

I'll remember it as bittersweet. I was in the room when my grandfather died. He was ninety-two, and died the way people should die but rarely do: at the time and place of his choosing, and surrounded by people who loved him. It got me thinking about how I want my life to turn out. Perhpas not like my grandfather's, but not necessarily unlike it, either. If the attendance at one's funeral is any indication of how well-loved a person was, my grandfather was recieving love from so many directions he must have been inhaling bushels of it with every breath. I would like to give so much love in my life. I would like to be as full of love.

The year 2008 was a year where I discovered that I am lucky, and that I am humbled by how lucky I am and how easy my life is.

I hope, in this coming year, I find my feet. I hope I break in these changes until they are comfortable enough for me to walk through the next set. I hope I see the direction in which I'm supposed to move next, and I hope to be happy. I hope to love as much as I am loved.

I'm grateful for the year 2008. I'm grateful for the lessons I learned, for the lessons I taught, for the miles that I've walked.