My December

December feels odd as the years go by.

I remember the anticipation of the past, the crowding of family, the joy of the gift-giving. Cliche. Common. Special.

The Christmas before we left, we got a real tree. It rained needles across the hardwood and made the whole house smell like evergreen. I wore a plaid dress and sat for a charming picture by our fireplace. I ripped open gifts and left the paper for my parents to clean up, heedless of the noise and the mess I left. My little brother raced around the room with boundless energy, his dimple emerging under the influence of his constant grin. His teeth are still crooked. He’s now far taller than me, thinner and more angular, with longer hair and broader motions. The dimple stayed.

Part of the draw of the holidays is nostalgia. My mom recently found a band, The Carpenters, that played her favorite Christmas songs when she was a teenager. That looking back is sweet and comforting; the epitome of bittersweet.

I have caught her more often recently, looking at me with a sheen of sudden tears.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she replies with a smile. She swipes at her cheeks. She gestures at a girl, about nine, gazing at us over her daddy’s shoulder with liquid brown eyes. “You were that little.” Once.

This year, my mind seems constantly scrambled. I have papers to write and projects to complete and math to catch up on and college applications to finish. On top of that and more, I worry. I worry about where I will be next year. I worry about if I’ll be accepted and where. Where will I live? How will I afford it? How will I adjust? Next year I will be an ocean away from my home. I will uproot myself again, but this time I must have a plan, not my parents. That terrifies me. It is constantly on my mind.

This year is a year of lasts. This is my last Christmas living here. The next time I set up the scraggly tree, string the lights and open the gifts… I will live somewhere else. How can I be home without my family? How can I be home without my brother almost setting the house on fire, or watching Gilmore Girls with Mom, or asking Dad about his latest photoshoot?

Home is a hard term to define for me, but I realized long ago that I will never be fully content and complacent anywhere. My roots don’t lie in any earthly soil, they rest everywhere. In moments of clarity, they rest in my Lord. That should give me peace, but too often I forget. If I could only remember where my peace should come from, I could keep my mind in the here and now, in the day-to-day mess and stress.

This Christmas I am caught between the nostalgia of the past and anxiety for my personal future. I suppose life is often like that. I rarely notice that it’s the present moments that become the fondest memories, but I suppose that is the way of the world.