on Christmas Eve believing

I used to sleep in my brother's room on Christmas Eve.  We'd build a fort out of his mattress and sheets and stay up late listening to funny Christmas music on Z100.  I'd lay on his floor and look up at his window, listening past the radio for sounds of reindeer on the roof.  I believed long after I should have believed.  I knew it wasn't practical.  I knew it wasn't possible.  But I believed.  And I waited.  The radio would turn off and my brother would fall asleep as the blue light from his alarm clock cast a wintery glow over his room.  Maybe it was just the same blue as the day before.  But on that night it would look magical.

We stayed together on that night even after we were too old to share a room.  Even when the childhood home was sold and the great big divorce forced us to travel between parents, we had each other.  Years after college I would still meet him at our Dad and Stepmom's in the city or later at his own home in Boston with his growing family. 

Mike and I are heading to my brother's house today and will leave him and his family tomorrow afternoon, just a few hours shy of the settling in of Christmas Eve.  But I love knowing that tomorrow night in my brother's house my oldest nephew will be looking out his bedroom window waiting and listening and believing.  That the tradition continues.  That it's not just ours to remember, but ours to pass along.