Well, I had high hopes for this Christmas season; it's kinda going south here in the last week and a half before Christmas.

I think this year it has to do with seeing so many people prepare for family and friends for the holidays and not having a "family" per se. We have places to go, don't get me wrong, but in all of those places, we will feel like outsiders looking in and not like part of the family.

To top it all off, we now live so close to my "hometown" that I can taste it, for the first time since I've had children. So close, and yet so far. I had briefly entertained the idea of pointing the car east Sunday (our day off from the paper), and heading to town (about a three hour drive), and going to church there, just to feel like we were home.

But it wouldn't be right. There's nothing there. My dad lives there, but it's been two years since we spoke, because I finally realized two years ago that I was better off NOT speaking to him. He is an angry, hurtful old man who chooses to express his anger by tearing apart others, and I just emotionally can't hang with that.

And so, we will celebrate Christmas with just our nuclear family again this year. It is made easier in knowing we're finally celebrating the holidays in a place of our own, but I never wanted my children to grow up wiothout knowing their aunts and uncles like I did, but tragically, that seems to be their fate.

Que sera, sera, I guess,

Gideon MacLeish