December holidays are a mixed bag of emotions for me. Sometimes I feel surprise, joy, melancholy, regret, loss, anticipation, curiosity, and more. It’s complicated. My children are all in their twenties and live in Chicago where they are in various stages of “the launch.” This year my wife, Mary, suggested we do something different for Christmas. I felt resistance bubbling up as I listened to her proposal. “Let’s give the kids all of the ornaments we’ve been collecting for the past twenty-nine years and let them hang them on their own Christmas Trees.” I pictured our sad Christmas Tree without the 80 ornaments we’d given to our children over the years. I thought about how much I would miss t
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