Buffalo, Day 9: Mele Kalikimaka

Another Christmas has come and gone (well, in ten minutes it will have gone, at least from this coast.) Having missed the past two family Christmases I can't necessarily judge this one as being abruptly different, but people have slowly drifted off either due to death or work, and slowly people have grown older and the excitement surrounding the event has abated. Gone (at least for now) are the days where the kids clamored to open their gifts at the crack of dawn and a separate table was set in the kitchen to contain the mess. Now everyone is either exhausted after a few hours, or has additional family obligations at other houses and has to skip off quickly, leaving a dwindling crowd to pick at the remains of the meal and socialize.

On the plus side, most gifts these days are the cash/gift card variety, which also means gone are the days of waiting in mile-long lines at the returns counter.

One more full day for me in Buffalo; one more full day of recollections and memories; one more full day of the ghosts of familiar sights and sounds; one more full day of old haunts and old patterns; one more full day of flashbacks to my 21 year-old self.

One more day of living out of a suitcase in a guest bedroom in a house I once knew. I'm ready to go home.