Sunshine On My Christmas Aching Heart

I don't know if I have really got settled in here in Colorado yet.
I have the itch and feel kind of uprooted most of the time.
I spend time on realtor.com searching for homes here and there all over our country, focusing on upper mid west.

The mountains are beautiful, the weather is great, and the house is OK, but there's something missing, and all I can think of is the grass.

But, now the last couple of days the sun has been shining on me, the snow on the ground makes that squeaking sound when you walk on it, the smell in the air has that very familiar, friendly smell that brings me back to my childhood.

While Syssa is in school I abandon the messy kitchen, the piles of newly washed clothes that begs to be folded and put up, and just leave the house. Dressed like a Eskimo I take off and just walk for hours, letting my thoughts wander to where ever they want to go.

It's a wonderful feeling! You have to remember, I have been in the south for the last 10 years and haven't had a winter since I left Sweden.

It's a split feeling though, and it's hard to describe.
I love my life with my family and don't wish for anything else, and at the same time I miss my roots, my upbringing, my HOME back in Sweden.

The fact that Christmas is approaching doesn't help of course.
I grew up with the most predictable Christmases you can imagine. I mean, you could set your watch after what we did and when. And shame on you if you for a second thought you could change any of that. And who would want to change it?

It was perfect...

We were together cousins, aunts and uncles, moms and dads and our grandparents when they were still alive. We ate and ate and ate, we sang all the Christmas songs in pretty harmonies, some song that we knew the first two lines of and filed in with raj, raj raj after we ran out of the other words, and some African anti Apartheid songs.... that's too long of a story to explain why, but let me just say that my grandma loved it so we first sang it to her and after she died we sang it because she would have loved to hear it... ( told you we had a wacko Christmas) , and read the Gospel Luke chapter 2. My grandpa said a prayer and blessed the whole family and then finally was there time for presents!!! We gave them all out but nobody could open any until it was their turn. We usually did it in order youngest to oldest even though my grandma always cheated. Well with 15 people taking turns to open presents it took a good two hours or more to open everything and after all that we had to have some more food, rice porridge and coffee with tons of cookies. Christmas eve lasted almost to Christmas morning every year.

So that's what I left, and that's what I carry within me. My family trying to easy the feeling of abandoned and being left out, by calling me right after opening the presents and right before the porridge, and bless their heart for doing that.