The holidays

In early December she would ask several times a day if anyone was coming for Christmas, or if we were going anywhere. I would answer, "No one is coming. We're not going anywhere. It will just be you and me and we'll go to lots of movies." She thought that sounded great.

On December 18th, she asked me what day it was. I told her it was the 18th.  "Oh," she said, "almost my birthday." I said no, it's almost Christmas; your birthday is in January. She took me to the kitchen where she had hung a 2009 calendar. 

Trusting in this calendar, she had jumped past Christmas and was now in January. We did this several days in a row before I could get her back into December. Then she remembered that we were supposed to be going to movies. We saw two in two days, skipped a few days, and then headed out to see our third movie. 

On the way she said, "When was the last time we went to a movie...", more like a statement of our spotty movie attendance than a real question. I told we were on our way to our third movie of the holiday season. She asked what we had seen. I told her we only went to one-word titles; we had seen Milk and Doubt. Now we were stepping one article outside our comfort zone by going to see The Wrestler. She thought that was funny, but she clearly didn't remember what I was talking about.