In a brightly lit grocery store, all the way at the end of a sensationally lengthy personal care products aisle, I crouched into a deep squat, squinting at the labels and trying to figure out what lotion would be the best for my husband's rough cracking hands. A few seconds later, he came up behind me and put his arms around me and instantly I was awash in a girlish giddiness that made my cheeks flush and my stomach do somersaults.
Because we are in December, we could hear the old classic melody of "Silver Bells" playing off in the distance, sounding removed and packaged in a way that only a grocery store loud speaker up in the rafters could provide.
Tyler started singing along and trying to get me to dance with him in the middle of the aisle and I kept laughing and ducking so he couldn't capture me and suddenly it felt like we were the kids we were when we first met. Tyler, a fresh faced jovial youth of 23 and me a bleeping 18 year old smalltown escapee.
How the hell does Christmas do it? How does this season dredge up the past so forcefully, with all of its complexities and extremes of the heart? What is the festive mechanism that resurrects earth shattering sorrows and brings them to the surface alongside warmth and redemptive joy? It puzzles me that all of this can co-exists. I am mesmerized by the immensity of it all, as I twirl around in grocery store aisles while Silver Bells plays.