Christmast the Time Machine

It's Christmas morning and all is calm and right in our little place on earth. The kids are playing with the "Santa" gifts. Pepper is back in bed, one of my gifts to her. And the television is all ablaze with the roaring fire bonus feature on the Colbert Christmas Special. That feature alone makes it worth picking up the DVD.
And I'm blogging.

I don't know of anything else that hurtles me back through time like a Christmas morning. Photographs can't even compare. I can feel the temperature of the living room and the cool draft that floated through the sliding glass doors of the house on Meadow Lane. The smell of the golden yellow carpet in front of my grandparents fire place, the spot I slept so many times as a child on Christmas Eve. I can feel the blue gray corduroy upholstery on our twin easy chairs under my finger tips. I'm right back in my six year old body, awake early, before any one else, laying on my side, looking at our new and first microwave. Even now I can feel and hear the pop of the microwave door. I pushed that "Open" button repeatedly until my mom finally got out of bed. The guilt and excitement still sneaks in as I watch myself snatch one gift and steal away downstairs, where I opened a present from my sister, a few days early. It was a watch, maybe E.T. and I was unable to wrap it up well enough to conceal my inability to wait.
Each Christmas day these memories, and others like them, fall through me with such speed and force they slice open holes in time that I can't help but fall through. I spend the day experiencing and reliving Christmas in multiple dimensions, simultaneously. It's wonderful.
This year Oslo received a 120 pack of Crayola Crayons. The smell of the wax and cardboard, the feel of the smooth yellow and green box, dropped me right back into my child self. The one that lived on Orchard ave. in Ogden, Utah and attended Marlon Hills Elementary school. And just as I was then, today I was filled with the desire to arrange all those colors into some kind of sensible order. I think, this morning,  I found a suitable solution by grouping all the warm colors in the front, the cool colors in the middle, and the neutrals in the back. This little task was quite satisfying but made me late for breakfast.
I spent a few moments looking at the newly organized pack, enjoying for that moment, knowing Oslo would not be interested in maintaining my system.
And now I get to help Luca get geared up to try roller skating. It's back to the present, fully focused and fully aware I could be reliving Christmas day 1987 at any moment.
All the best to all of you and Merry Christmas.