Advent Season

There have been so many changes in the last  year, mostly for Patrick.  He turned 18 and entered adulthood, graduated high school, and started college.  And with adulthood comes the loss of allowance and curfew, and the gaining of new privileges and responsibilities.  It also turns out that your Advent calendar shrinks a little, shifting from hand wrapped gifts and treats to, although imported, store-bought chocolate.

Since the real meaning of Advent is the countdown and anticipation to Christmas and celebrating Christ's birth, the size of your chocolate hopefully doesn't really matter.  And since this mother's love is not measured by the size and weight of chocolate or treats, this change in Advent calendar is simply the next step in a progression from little boy to man, and a little representative of a mother's unwillingness to completely let go of the little boy.  One day the Advent calendars will stop completely until, perhaps, the day when they restart in the next generation.