Right about now

 

     

     ...Barbara and I would've been just sitting down to dinner. I would've just taken my kids back to their mom's side of the family after having them over so I could give them their presents. We then would've collaborated on dinner. I would've made the pork loin with cherry preserves at 350 for 45 mins and mashed potatoes, Old School, as well as the veggies. She would've made her cheesey potato casserole as well as the two boxes of stuffing and the pork gravy. Then, she would've opened the bottle of Riesling I always got because she was my wine girl.

      Last night, we would've taken turns in the bedroom wrapping gifts and stuffing stockings. Popeye would've been in and out, consumed with curiosity over what Mommy and Daddy were hiding from him. All the ornaments may or may not have stayed on the tree.

 

      We would've opened our presents early in the morning right after starting the coffee. And between the presents themselves and the stocking stuffers, there were always dozens of things to open up. Popeye would've been tuckered out from his annual catnip overdose.

      Then, after dinner, we'd wrap up the leftovers and looking forward to another four days or so of Xmas leftovers. We always look at each other afterwards and say, "Well, honey, we survived another Christmas."

      We'd go to bed whenever, usually with a new book we given each other that morning. It was a routine we'd immediately fallen into since our first Christmas together in 2009 and, over the next 13 Christmases after that, it changed little (except for the time her family literally tried to kidnap her and keep her forever despite her saying she wanted to go back home with me. They kept her for five weeks during that visit, dooming me to spend Xmas and New Years that year alone with the cat).

      It was through some dubious "good fortune" or some Greater Being's beneficence that I was able to survive both of them. And I wanted to share this old part of my life because now privacy doesn't matter so much any more. Up until poor Barbara began her final decline and had to go away, I'd kept my content here confined almost exclusively to the political and literary. But veterans of my blog may remember these pictures I'd put up a decade ago today. I wanted to once more share this window into my old life because it was one of the dearest and most coveted times of the best decade I'm ever going to live.