On Tuesday the 16th I finally laid my burden down! 4 months of 50-hour weeks, work related travel all over the state and the stress and the setback of The Garage Betrayal are finally behind me as I started a well-earned vacation. This is one of the longest spans of time off I’ve ever taken, and unusually, I left town without a shred of guilt! I took no work-related equipment with me (may be the first time ever!) and went to see my family with a sense that this holiday trip was going to carry a little more weight than many in the past. And it was certainly going to carry a big bill!
I landed @ PHX, picked up a a black Corolla with Viriginia license plates: a perfect disguise! Phoenix—big skyline, bright lights, the slightly surreal “vacation-mode” feeling of a manmade oasis that’s trying its best to manufacture seasonal warmth in the desert. And honestly? It worked.
Phoenix Christmas is a special kind of American magic: you walk into a giant hotel atrium and suddenly it’s “the holidays,” regardless of what the desert outside is doing. Twinkling lights, fake snow energy, people in vacation clothes carrying gift bags from bougey stores… it’s cheesy and weird and I kind of love it.
Demographically, this city has a lot of action for an old bear like your humble blogger, and I got myself a piece! A responsible number of bad decisions were made, and after a certain point, the camera stopped documenting events for legal reasons.
One cool byproduct of all my partying was an unexpected pick up for the Hot Wheels collection. I was hanging out with a guy who was in the process of liquidating a household of collectibles leftover from a “former marriage,” And when I mentioned I was a Hot Wheels collector, he said he had a handful of them he’d be happy to give me. That’s how I wound up with this odd quartet of cars, the plum which is the original Spectraflame orange “Splittin’ Image.”
Phoenix got… festive. Let’s leave it at that. It was a wild and quick couple of days and nights, and then it was out east to San Tan Valley to visit my cousin and my uncle-my dad’s brother-where we spent some time reminiscing about my dad and our grandparents, looking at some old pictures running from the ‘70s all the way back to the late ‘30s of all our dearly departed: the ghosts of Christmas Past.
And finally came my arrival at my resting place: quiet and peaceful Prescott, a retirement community in the northern mountains with an altitude and a climate not all that different from my residence in Denver. Here was my core: mom, my brother, my sister-in-law and her big family and their children and friends, and of course, the doggie-woggies! It was my first time in the new, bigger house they’ve moved into in the last few months so everything was new and clean, merry and bright.
The family and I had some serious discussions about what the future holds, for us collectively and for me specifically as I try to pound into shape a vision of what the next phase of my life might look like in the aftermath of everything that’s happened in the last year. I have big decisions to make, and big decisions are scary. But I have people in my corner; I know I am loved and I know I am needed. That’s what everybody wants and needs, and reconnecting with our loved ones is what the holiday season is about.
My sister-in-law worked hard to fix a fantastic dinner on X-mas Eve, and the house was filled with people and animals from all walks of life. There was food, booze, music, conversation, laughter: it was loud and chaotic and absolutely wonderful, and X-mas morning – complete with eggs and bacon b-fast – was peaceful and reverend.
And so it went: the sins sown in the city, the higher yearnings of the heart completed in the country: the yin and the yang, the alpha and omega, the inbound flight and the outbound flight. The return to CO lacked the luster of the trip out, but the return carried its own reward. That, dear readers, is Part II….
I admire the energy you have Bud. This sounds like a lot of a wonderful time, and it looks like you really enjoyed the holiday and time away!