Family Photo

This photo was taken, I think, two Christmases ago. (Note: We DID NOT match our clothes' color palette intentionally. It just worked out that way.) It makes me happy, of course, to see us all so happy together on Christmas morning. But this picture also makes me a little sad. I know! This blog is about happy things. So we'll not say sad... but melancholy. Because this year, my sister Meg can't come home for Christmas.

Meg is a professional distance runner for Adidas. She lives in Arizona. Due to her racing schedule, she couldn't have been home for more than a few days, and that coupled with the flight's length and extreme expense meant it just wasn't in the cards this year.

I saw Meg for Thanksgiving for a day or so, and that was nice. And I think she might try to squeeze in a visit between races sometime after Christmas, so I'll see her then, too. But this is the first Christmas where all three of us sisters won't be together on Christmas morning. We have so many quirky traditions -- waiting at the top of the stairs until our parents have everything in place, Kate wearing ridiculous and sometime inappropriate old pajamas, always opening our stockings first, always saving our sister presents to each other for last, the obligatory post-present-opening fashion show, Grandma's egg dish, having Jim Henson and the Muppets Christmas tape (yes, cassette tape!) on in the background... I could go on and on. Most of that will probably still happen, but it just won't be the same without Meg home.

Granted, things were bound to change this year with Sophie in the picture. That might make up for Meg's absence a little bit. But we'll miss Meg a lot, and we'll all be a little sad (wait, not sad - melancholy!) on Christmas morning when we make one fewer pile of presents.

However, thinking back, we've had SO MANY great Christmas mornings together. Times change, things change, traditions come and go. We're not kids anymore (even though we sometime act like it). We'll see each other as often as we can. And when we do, we'll reminisce and laugh about the good times gone by. Because some things won't change: the memories we have of holidays past, and the promise of new traditions to come.