26

Two years ago tonight I sat down in this exact chair, at probably this same time, to write about a pressing feeling that has nothing in common with the one I have now. I am a fantastically unproductive writer, which is disappointing because if you know me, you know I never shut up. You'd think I'd be able to muster something here and there to keep me attached to the idea that someday I too can go on a book tour telling stories that were as effortless in print as they are in conversation. But somehow I always end up speechless in this damn chair. Some things never change.

Two years ago tonight, I was overwhelmed by that thought. Here it is just a trifle - a good way, I figure, to ease into wherever it is I think I am going. But two years ago tonight, it was an obsession. I was fixated on this image of Earth, immovable blue marble that she is, whipping around the sun with total disregard for my feelings. See, I sat down in this exact chair determined to draw a very poetic contrast between that orbit and my lack of plans. This rock had circled a star and I still lived in the same apartment building. I took solace in the fact that it was on a different floor, but that seemed to make matters worse: I had mustered the courage to move, and I ended up switching elevator banks.

I spend a lot of my time looking backward. I'm still not sure if this means I am nostalgic, or if I believe that things just aren't as good as they used to be. It's a delicate balance to be sure, but back then the scales were tipped decidedly behind me. So I sat in this chair with the intention of taking that intangible frustration and committing it to paper . . . a beautifully symbolic story about a planet and a boy, and how the two just couldn't stop going in circles. Suffice to say, it never happened. Not only was I stuck in a rut, but the wheels had fallen off. Writer's block. Some things never change.

But tonight, in this same chair, the mission is entirely different. For the first time in my life, this house is empty on Christmas Eve. The family that was once unchangeably here, the perennial assembly that we took for granted, they are now fractured, strewn across a continent and held asunder by injury, by anger, by childish frustration. We won't see them when the sun rises, and its as much by choice as by design. I can hear the television in the other room, and I smirk as I realize that it's something other than the Weather Channel: my grandparents are hundreds of miles away. I won't have to tiptoe up the stairs this Christmas Eve, because my uncle isn't sleeping in the room across the hall. Hell, even the dog is dead. And in an almost hyperbolic soliloquy, the priest decided that this year's midnight mass would be better celebrated at 10pm. Seriously, you can't make that up.

I do this every Christmas Eve. I stay up hours after the lights have gone out, doing nothing in particular. I'm still a big kid, and this is the most magical night of the year. Listen closely and it's as if you can almost hear the entire weary world taking stock of its troubles, drawing a collective breath, and heaving the load back onto its shoulders, preparing for another trip around the sun. And I don't find that sad. Whether you are Sisyphus or Atlas, there is a solemn beauty in the reassurance that we will all carry on.

In a moment I'll get up and head over to our Christmas tree, and I'll do the same thing I've done every year, for as long as I can remember. I'll shut off the lights, and in the pitch dark room I'll contemplate that stately shape silhouetted against the bleak winter night beyond the glass. And I'll take a deep breath and square my shoulders, and all these pieces will align. And despite all the gloom I will sleep better than I have in a year. Thank god some things never change.