🎄❆ Yearning for Christmas ❆ 🎄

    I woke up this morning with the overwhelming desire and hope for it to be December. I've always been excited for these autumn months; ever since I was a little girl, I loved the coming of holidays. One after another. I anxiously waited for the weather to cool (in California, that meant 85°F, with wind). The leaves turning into an influx of red, brown, and yellow hues. The influx of allergies, primarily because of the agriculture emerging within my town. My step-father coming home with a cloud of dust from the almond factory he worked at, and my Nana dropping off varieties of green and red grapes from the fields where she worked. That's how I knew autumn was here. School would start, then Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. It never seemed to change. 

But of course, as everyone knows, once you age, you lose the same holiday whimsy that you and these months seemed to have had. Not including climate change, which just seems to make the heat last longer, there's a definite change in this season that there used to not be. The colors are different; the excitement is different, and so am I. 

I'm not six, and I haven't been for the longest time, despite it feeling like just yesterday, and still being able to relish in the memories and scents that those had of this season. I can still smell the trees, concrete pavements, puddles, Halloween candy, cinnamon lattes, and Christmas trees. They have ingrained themselves into my brain & senses. I can't seem to let go. I want so badly for it all to come back. 

And the thing is... they haven't gone away, not literally. But there is a change, and I think a lot of people can agree on that. It's definitely not the same. So when I woke up this morning, I hoped it was Christmas. As a last-ditch effort to grasp on to memories that I don't want to fade. That comfort of the winter holiday and happy cheer. I've realized that it's all I want for these upcoming months: to experience, in that very moment, an inkling of childhood glee and excitement again. That familiarity. Unfortunately, that's not to come, not only because it's September (3 months early), but because I've grown, and I have to realize that. It won't be the same, not ever. Doesn't mean I can't hope for it to or try to recreate it, in the now.