Wow. It's 2015. How the hell is that even possible? I turned 40 at the end of last year and every day sense has had an aire of oddity to it. In my youth I never really thought I would live past my thirties. Not for any particular reason. I wasn't especially reckless in my youth, it's just that 40 seemed so old. Now that I'm here and nearly 1/6th of the 21st century is behind us it all just seems... Odd.
In October I was laid off from the best job I'd had in my life. I never expected that I would actually get to work at a comic book store, and once I did, I never expected that it would actually end. Then, quite suddenly it did.Two weeks after that my wife was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and suddenly everything in my life was put in perspective. Her prognosis is good, so are my job prospects, but It wasn't lost on me that I had indeed hit a rough patch in life. Everything can change in a moment, so grab on to the people and things that you love and enjoy all you have, for as long as you have it.
So, this holiday season found my family preparing for my wife's surgery and trying our very best to enjoy each other and the season. Thankfully, we had an amazing support system of friends and colleagues who helped us out. So much so that financially and spiritually we were very comfortable.
Our entire holiday centered on making the most out of what we had and being very grateful for it.
On New Years Eve, my wife and I took the entire family to the Albuquerque Museum. It's New Mexico's answer any larger cities municipal art museum. The entire day was pretty amazing. My wife and I had the chance to share our love and appreciation for art to our children. I love looking closely at centuries old paintings and paying close attention paint strokes and small globs of paint that were left upon the canvas by the hand of a painter that is long dead.I loved it more on this particular trip because I got to share it with my children and see wonder and understanding on their faces when I pointed it out.
After the museum we spent the afternoon in Old Town Albuquerque, which is always a lot of fun. Old Town is a lot more authentic and less polished than say San Diego's Old Town which seems to be a little fake. Sure, that area of town is a 'tourist trap' but it doesn't entirely feel like one. The entire day was just such a sweet send off to the holiday season. In a few days our kids would be going back to school, my wife would be having major surgery to remove her thyroid and I would have to begin my job search in earnest.
On the drive home I heard a song on the radio that I had never heard before. Before the second verse I was in love. The song was George Ezra's 'Budapest.' A song about giving up everything in your life for the one you love. The song blew me away. Because it felt very familiar to me. There I was, at a moment in my life when a lot of thing had been stripped away. My lively, my comfort and in a lot of way my status and standing in the community. But I was also stripped of preconceptions about what it takes to be truly happy. Listening to that son in the car with my family sitting in comfortable silence(which is rare) I was happy to have lost, and still have the ones I love.
