This is a post of a memory from a time that I have yet to live through.
Log cabins are colder when you're spending the holidays in them; alone. Your firewood isn't quite dry, so you use your 44" TV to create an ambiance. The Vince Guaraldi Trio's Charlie Brown Christmas vinyl plays faster and slower every time the needle runs up the warped hills; things a bit smoother as the record plays the needle in toward the center. Negative thoughts flicker in and out of vision; you hope familiar faces will soon be at the door and what feels like forever can feel like a "never will occur" until what you've waited for finally arrives. Home. It isn't where I grew up. It isn't where my parents' live. It isn't my girlfriend's grandparents' house. It's where I am when I have to watch my eldest sister open her Christmas gifts on a video call (and not one of those gifts are from me). It's waiting for your girlfriend to get to you late because she had things she needed to take care of back in civilization. Things her future depends on. Things our family could one day depend on if we were to have one. I understand. So I wait for her plane to land. She knows how to find the place, so I wait on the sofa and listen to the fire crackle on the television, feeling no warmth in my heart. I wait in the dining area, picking at the cheese and vegetable spreads. Half of the eggnog is gone, knowing I'd be the only one of the two of us who would end up drinking it anyway.
To be honest, her plane isn't scheduled to land until New Year's Eve's eve. I just have everything ready five days in advance. I sort of worry about things like that all the time. My focus is to make this getaway perfect for her. Perfect for my family. Hell, maybe even myself. Change the vinyl to side B while I heat up the microwave dinner and watch videos of our first time spent together. That trip to New York, or that party we went to, they all have their own little bits and pieces of sentiment and even pain. Nothing has been perfect and I'm grateful for that alone. The videos don't help me remember why I fell in love with her, I never forgot. I just needed to smile while I waited for her to arrive. I imagine her walking through the door with a dozen plastic grocery bags in her hands and the retractable dog leash's handle being hooked by her pinkie and ring finger. Our Husky (whose name we couldn't agree on so we call her different things) runs passed her legs. She slips and I catch her. "Did you miss me," I say with the love in my eyes; pupils literally shaped as hearts like a cartoon character. "Your hair... It's pink." I say. Laughing in my head if she were to say "I change my hair every week and and a half, dude, get used to it," like Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. I wake up and I'm still alone.
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