One of the hardest mental feats for me to master is the trick of not expecting things to be anything other than what they are.

Christmas, for instance.

The easiest thing in the world to do is to try to compare current Christmases with those of the past, and that's self-defeating by definition. Nothing can ever compare or shape up to the power of a treasured memory. In fact, that's how things get to be memories, by aging and accumulating the weight of myth and love. No present day occurrence can ever hope to compete with that.

Memories also draw their power from taking place at a time when we were much younger and the world seemed to unfurl in front of us, fresh and full of hope and possibility. As we age, that world narrows of necessity, as our options become more limited by our own choices and by circumstance and by the passage of time.

So why do I do it year after year? Why do I find it so hard to accept something for what it is rather than for what it is not? Why do I, and I suspect, so many others, hearken back to Christmases past and bemoan the lack of substance of modern Christmases?

I suppose it's always easier to remember and enshrine the past because its done and gone and whatever it was, it's out of your control, and thus, not your responsibility. The present is being written and the future hasn't been written yet so those are still up to me to affect and change. And as an adult, I have that responsibility, unlike when I was a child and my sole function at a holiday was pretty much sitting back and enjoying all the magic that came my way. Sure I helped in little ways here and there, but all in all the presents, the tree, the lights, the cooking, the cards, the candles and everything else was the province of my mom and dad, God bless them and I sponged off of their kindness and effort. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be when you are young. I know that I was and will always be grateful to them for creating those iconic memories of what holidays SHOULD be. My problem is recapturing or at least echoing those idyllic moments as an adult; distilling the golden nugget of peace and joy from those memories while at the same time acknowledging the impossibility of ever fully reviving the sheer bliss of those times as an adult.

Thinking of your parents as people and not avatars is a real lesson in growing up. I'm sure that many of the times they were creating that special world for me, they were cognizant of the difference between THEIR childhood holidays and their adult ones. I'm sure they missed relatives and silently bemoaned the dearth of new responsibilities they now bore as parents of two children who looked to them to create. And yet, through their efforts, they engendered that special feeling in me. They helped foster a dream of an idealized Christmas (and world in general) and ultimately, maybe that's what the challenge is for all adults. Instead of experiencing the ideal, the job is to create it. That's part of becoming an adult too; understanding that the next generation is now the priority and trying to instill whatever magic your parents instilled in you into THAT generation.

I don't have kids, so my challenge is a bit more murky. Regardless, I can still pass on that sense of the ideal to people I know and love, just as it was passed on to me. Roger McGuinn wrote a song called "If We Never Meet Again" in which he wrote, "I want to do that for somebody else, the way it was done for me...". I think about that song a lot, particularly since my mom died. It's a song about passing the torch of compassion and kindness from one generation to another. It's not specifically about Christmas but I think Christmas memories can serve as a specific example of the overall goal of "bequeathed wonder", of transitioning from one person's treasured memories of an idealized Christmas (and more generally, childhood) to another, usually younger, person's concept of the same.

I'll still always pine for my days of childhood abandon, but I'll take comfort in the knowledge that in instilling those great feelings in others, I'm doing (or at least trying in my own very imperfect way) the same thing that my mom and dad did for me.
Whether it be through an unexpected card or gift, a phone call or random act of kindness, these deeds are of little cost to me personally but reap great rewards in the form of personal satisfaction and hopefully, happiness in those that receive them.

It's a different, more subtle type of joy, but ultimately it's what's available to us once we get past childhood. The rewards aren't as immediately apparent, but like so many other things about aging, once you accept them as natural and inevitable, their inherent signficance becomes clear.

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for creating the sense of wonder in me that dwells forever in memory and that compels me to treat others in such a way that they too, can experience wonder.