It's the little things...

And then one day it happens - you stumble across an old holiday picture and wonder how it was ever real to begin with. How do you spend half a decade of New Year's Eves within someone and then suddenly never see them again?

It's not a desire to reclaim the past, just... a sadness, I guess, of feeling like it was just yesterday but when you turn around to look, it's a thousand miles away. It becomes a moment of "remember when we were so young and full of life? Remember how we smiled? Remember how we thought it'd last forever?"

And then one year you watch the ball drop on your world and everyone you know is on live tv while you watch them from your living room couch thinking "How did I get all the way over here?"

It only takes one "annual holiday party" to get canceled before cancellations become the new tradition. And it's not even that I feel sad, it's just... it's the little things in life that make you smile: the smell after a good rain, finding a toy surprise in the cereal box, hanging tinsel on the tree.

I guess tinsel is a thing of the past now too. We don't hold as tightly to traditions as we once did.

The funny thing is, I don't even remember much about what happened that night except the sudden decision that everyone had to dress up last minute and all I could find were a mismatching blouse and skirt in a pile of random stuff in the backseat of my car. All the excitement of that night, the year leading up to it, the year that followed, and all I can think about is a mismatched shirt.

Like I said, it's the little things that make you smile...