So the question is whether or not I feel like going out on this gray, dull day. I am so warm and cozy in my little home. Dogs sleeping around me. Birds chirping to the classical music playing for them… ok, maybe parrots don’t exactly chirp but they do their best. And given my ability to carry a tune, their little screeches are equally as easy on the ears.
Assuming the thaw goes away or some snow falls soon, we will have a white Christmas here. Or, at least, a grayish snow Christmas depending on how much exhaust gets blown over the whiteness. I remember as a child wondering why all the songs were about a white Christmas. We rarely got them where I lived in Atlantic City. And if we did get them, mom just got mad because then the drive to Philly to be with the family for Christmas dinner would become scary. Not that it bothered my father, the driver. Even after the Expressway was built, he took the old Black Horse Pike to the Tacony Palmyra Bridge where we got free passage and a candy cane for every kid in the car as we passed over the Delaware into Philly. It took a lot longer that way but dad was averse to paying the toll on the Expressway. I can still hear my mother telling him, “That’s ok, Phil, you take the Pike. But when you die, I’m taking the Expressway and giving them your money.”
Yep, Christmas memories. Some much better, often, in retrospect than when actually happening. Because when this memory was actually happening, my brother and I were both in the car urging it forward faster than dad’s 50 mph rule so that we could see our cousins and show them the one present we were allowed to bring with us to Philly.
I miss those rides.