Tracking Santa

Colorado Springs is my hometown. Colorado Springs is home to NORAD. NORAD tracks Santa every year and as I write this post, this very exact second, the NORAD Tracks Santa webpage tells me that Santa is in Colorado Springs.

And I am crying.

Santa had kind of a zig zag route this year, coming up out of Mexico. He zigged to Tucson, and zagged to Roswell and zigged to Cedar City and finally he zagged back to Colorado Springs. I thought he was NEVER going to get there. I was waiting impatiently for him to fill Stirlings' stocking. He's taking so long in the Springs that I think he must have a lot for my grandkid. Heh heh!

And now he's in Lander. Now that is interesting. I would have thought he'd go to Cheyenne, but no, he went over to Lander. We like Lander. We have friends in Lander. :) :)

Hear a happy sigh.

Last night I watched as he zigzagged down out of Russia and into Ukraine, but he didn't go to Kiev and he didn't go to Odessa. He went to some place I'd never really heard of before. Well, I've heard of it, barely, kind of, it sounded a bit familiar: Kirovohrad. I looked out the window but didn't spy him flying over on his way south.

Many, many years ago I sat in the living room of our apartment in Fairbanks, Alaska. The kids were all asleep - Andrew was all of 5 weeks old. It was dark out. We had a nice Alaskan black spruce, kind of bare in the branches, but we had chosen it off of Mel's Dad's homestead and it was ours. Blue lights, red and white candy canes, silver tinsel and blue and white balls. I turned off all the lights in the house but the tree, and sat watching the late news, waiting for Mel to get off his late night shift and come home.

Suddenly an announcement came over the tv. NORAD was tracking something suspisious and it was headed right for Fairbanks, but wait! it looks like.... a sleigh and reidneer! It's Santa! And when the announcer said, "From NORAD in Colorado Springs, Colorado" I wept like a baby.

As I write now, I am crying. Not because I'm sad, but because it is Christmas morning and NORAD is still tracking Santa 29 years later and my family is sound asleep (or soon will be), tucked up in their beds near Colorado Springs and I won't be there when they wake up.

Christmas is hard so far away from home.

But I still enjoy it. Just with more emotion than if I was at home.