Christmas In Hawaii

It's my 3rd Christmas in Hawaii.

The first year, my dad came out and visited me, but left 2 days before Christmas.

I spent Christmas eve crying in my friend's dorm room,

reading The Christmas story in the Bible by myself.

The second year,

I had only been married for 3 months. 

And we were happy as larks -

a big fat student loan sat in our banks, we had a year to live in a house of our own.

This year my mom and her husband are visiting, we're spending the next who-knows-how-long on the Big Island, and the Coqui frogs singing to me are the closest sound I hear to 

Christmas caroling,

my mom's typing on the laptop the closest sound I hear to snow falling softly on the ground outside my window.

Each Christmas has been unique, have all marked a passage of time in my life, new discoveries made.

Gratitude re-established and reinstilled in my heart.

Yet, they've

never 

felt 

like

Christmas. 

I miss snow, and hot chocolate, fire places, slippers, heavy blankets, long pj bottoms and hoodies,

snowmen, pine trees blanketed in white and drizzled with icicles. 

I miss cold.

and knowing what month it is just by looking outside.

I literally get lost in this strange time zone in Hawaii - 

it's neither January nor June, because it's all the same.

It hasn't been 15 months since I got married,

because really it's only been one long summer.

I feel no sense of a passage of time.

And its even worse not being in school - I don't even know what day of the week it is anymore!

I'm trying to be patient.

I'm trying to remember I live in "paradise"

I'm trying to ignore the many fleeting voices of

"Boy aren't you lucky! Its freezing over here! Let's trade places!"

Ok, LET'S! PLEASE!

Can't wait to be back on the "mainland,"

if only to once again enjoy my holidays