It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Guilt-Mas

Almost every day now I open the mailbox, and find Christmas cards inside.  I know, it's the season, isn't it?  December 23, and I'm reading cards and Christmas letters from far-flung friends and family.  They've taken the time to send something out to me; sometimes just a card with a signature, and other times a personal note - some long, some short.  It's about this time each year that I realize that it's too late.  I've missed my chance for holiday greetings.

This year I have plenty of excuses, to be sure.  Final papers, graduation, guests in town, getting ready for Christmas at my house, running the Holiday Shop at my daughter's elementary school, and grieving the loss of a friend all count as good ones, I suppose.  But I have a great excuse every year.  I didn't get a chance to buy the cards; the stamps to mail them weren't in the budget; I ran out of time; etc, etc, etc.  I'm a Christmas card failure and I know it.

My father, 79 years old and living in Florida, sent me a Christmas card that arrived yesterday.  He's on a tight budget, living on social security and little else, but he takes the time and makes the investment each year to send a Hallmark card that he's picked out just for me.  No generic boxed cards for Dad.  Oh, no.  He's nothing if not meticulous when it comes to choosing just the right card, a new skill he acquired after my mother became ill and was no longer able to do it.  He'll spend an hour or more at the Hallmark store, picking out cards for each of us children and making sure that they contain just the right message.  I admire that about him; in fact, I used to do that myself.  The truth is, I haven't seen the inside of a Hallmark store in about 7 years.  I'm not sure there are even any of them in my area.  Life has been a blur, and the leisurely meanderings through the thousands of cards in the card store have become a thing of the past.

I'll talk to him on Christmas Eve by Skype, while he's at my sister's house having dinner.  There will be love and blown kisses, Merry Christmas wishes abounding...and then...the inevitable.  From somewhere in the background, while someone else is talking, he'll say it.  "I didn't know about _______(fill in the blank with any miscellaneous missing piece of information).  Gina must have written that in the Christmas card I never got."  It's his pet peeve.  I get it.  Really.  He has every right to be a little miffed at me.  It's just one card, after all.  One of these years I'll be prepared.  One of these years I'll remember, in time for it to arrive before Christmas Eve.  One of these years, I'll hear the excitement in his voice when he tells me that he got the card that I sent.  One of these years, things will go as planned, the tree will be ready early, the gifts will be wrapped before Christmas Eve, the boxes of gifts will be shipped on a day that doesn't require "air delivery", and I'll resume all the Christmas baking that I miss.  One of these years.