I am sick to death of this poem. Really, I used to like it. Ever since college when a guy in the English Club claimed it as a test for a future wife – whatever girl could recite the second half of the poem after he recited the first half got the honor of marrying him. At the time, I thought that charming. Ha! Good thing I didn’t spend much time trying to memorize it.
So instead of thinking about the poem I’m going to get all selfish and use this space to make my Christmas wish list.
Dear Santa. I hope you are well. How is Mrs. Clause. I love Christmas. Here is what I would like to receive:
1. That deep ping in my chest that happens when I listen to Lyle Lovett sing about ponies in boats.
2. The smell of dinner cooking when I’m not the one cooking it.
3. That relief that comes in the first few moments of having a baby. I don’t want what comes after (the baby), and I don’t want what comes before (the pregnancy), I just want the middle bit when all that pain suddenly quits and you’re left with a mushy pile of skinny limbs and the knowledge that, if you don’t want to, you never have to do that again.
4. The third sip of the first glass of a good merlot, after my palate has adjusted and before my brain gets so fuzzy that it thinks more glasses means more better.
5. The coziness of my four favorite people in the world piled with me in one big bed. And then the relief of all of them (except maybe one) leaving for their own beds after an hour.
6. The realization, fifteen or so pages in, that the book I’m reading is going to change my world, and that I have another few hundred pages to look forward to.
7. An hour like this one, huddled on a soft chair at the car fixing place, when no one needs me for anything and no one is expecting me.
8. The surprise that comes when I overhear two of my kids plotting to give their brother a really fantastic Christmas gift.
9. The first hour of a snow day when we still have power and everyone is happy to have a day off from school and no projects happen to pressing and the electricity is still on so I can have coffee.
10. The relief that comes from having enough (money, time, love, food) every single day.
Let us go then, you and I 
A perfect list.