A week or so before Christmas, I was browsing one of those trendy boutique shops that have popped up around our new downtown, desperately searching for a one-of-a-kind present for that special someone in my life. At that point, though, a week before Christmas, any kind of anywhere-close-to-unique token would have worked. For anyone on my list. Someone, heck, only semi-special. Didn’t matter. As I said, I was desperate.

The usual goal, if I’m being completely honest here, is not simply to find someone a suitable gift, which is hard enough. I need to look like I give a bit of thought to the whole process, too.

I often fail on both counts. I get hints and I forget them. I come up with a great idea and it turns out to be a dud. I take notes and lose them. I buy things, they promptly get returned. Most times I can tell my chance of shopping success as the unwrapping is taking place. Sometimes, I get that feeling as I slip the credit card out of my wallet.

Once in a while, sure, I find something that’s a hit. It might even have been my idea. But, again being honest, my overall batting average through the years, if there were such a thing as a gift-giving batting average, would put me on the bench among seventh-grade gym class dropouts.

Still, I try, I really do, which I have convinced myself counts for something. I ask friends. I ask friends of the person on my list. I think about what the people in my life might really like, something that would convey how much I really care about them. And then I end up desperately pawing through some local shop that seems to exist only to give rich, bored wives, clueless kids, and procrastinating husbands a place to be miserable before Christmas. Gift-giving is work.

A couple years ago on a Christmas quest in one of those places, I found a small, maybe 3-inch piece of wood with a sticker slapped on it that read, simply, “WOOF.” It was, I thought, a perfect tchotchke for my dog-loving wife. Despite the sticker on the flip side — $16 for a 3-inch chunk of scrap wood that wasn’t even carved or anything? It featured a printed word with all of four letters on a sticky piece of paper! — I bought it. Christmas wonders of wonders, it worked. These days, it sits proudly on the desk in my wife’s office. Well, I’m proud of it.

On that day before Christmas 2023, not yet two weeks ago, I’m frantically combing through a shop stocked with tea towels with clever sayings (what is a tea towel, anyway?), T-shirts with funky designs in funky colors, obscure board games, a boatload of over-fragranced candles of all sizes, local artwork (blown glass, hand-knitted and designed potholders, some metal somethingorothers), an entire section of junk geared toward your pet-obsessed loved ones (an aside: Did you know that you can sell anything in this part of the country if you somehow incorporate a University of Georgia logo onto it?), and tables full of too-clever-by-half and too-expensive-by-2 Christmas-themed knick-knackery, when I come upon another sign.

That “WOOF” one (^) that I gave my wife kind of aced me out of buying another clever gift with words printed on it. There’s some kind of present police for that sort of thing. A statute of imitations. But this one caught my eye nonetheless and, dangerously enough, got me to thinking.

I’d reproduce it graphically here, but I can barely get around a keyboard. You know the famous LOVE sculpture in Philadelphia? This simple sign, on particle board maybe an eighth-inch thick, maybe 2 feet by 2 feet, was kind of in that vein, except that instead of four letters with one of them askew, it was four words on a weathered-looking piece of paper, white on a black background, with the word IS on its side. It read:

THIS
IS THE
LIFE

I imagine some people buy that sign — I didn’t; stupid present police — and hang it behind the bar in their basement, or on the deck of their lake house. In the breakfast nook. Someplace where people gather. A kitchen, a family room. Someplace where you can kick out your feet once in a while, forget about deadlines and bills, let out a big sigh and say, “Yeahhh … This is the life.”

Being in the Christmas spirit, though, I took it to mean something slightly different:

I’m sitting in a Catholic church in Cincinnati for a Christmas mass. It’s Christmas Eve. The people of the city’s west side, as solidly working class as you’ll find anywhere, pack the pews to listen to a priest drone on about both Jesus (who everyone gets) and Jehoshaphat (who no one does). Some of the members of the congregation are dressed in their Sunday finest. For some, that’s their best blue jeans. Some have clearly hand-combed their bedheads just before coming to church. A few have pulled on whatever was on the closet floor when they were cajoled into coming. The crowd is peppered with old men in faded suits, young girls in scandalously tight skirts, teenage guys in tight sweaters with gold necklaces, and women with puffy winter coats over their favorite dresses. Babies cry. The faithful, young and old, shuffle up for communion. Smoke from incense burned inside a thurible, swung on a chain by the attending priest, climbs the marbled walls of the old church. People cough. They stand and sing Christmas hymns, full-throated. They greet neighbors. They pass the peace. This is the life.

It’s 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve. After a belt-loosening meal of antipasto, pasta, roast beef, fish, too many deserts to count — and wine, always the wine — Mary Jo’s folks, both in their 80s, are resting. It’s been a long day. Mr. and Mrs. D. (I’ve known them for some 30 years, and that’s what I’ve always called them) hosted the dinner for 10 and, over the past couple days, cooked almost the whole thing. Now, hours after the cleanup, Mr. D. is in his trusty recliner, blanket pulled up to his chin. Mrs. D. is next to him in her matching La-Z-Boy, rosary nearby. On the TV, across the long living room which was once two smaller rooms, “Ballando con le Stelle” — the Italian version of “Dancing with the Stars” — blares from the RAI network. Mary Jo, Luke, and I are stuffed onto a small sofa right next to the TV, in what was once another room. Brodie lies at our feet. We try to make sense of the judges, the contestants, the professional dancers, the non-stop Italian chattering. The show has been on for hours. We call it a night before Mr. and Mrs. D do. This is the life.

It’s Christmas Day. We drive to Mary Jo’s brother’s house for the annual Christmas Day family get-together. Mr. D is in front with me. Mary Jo’s in the middle of the back seat, which she hates, her mom on one side, her son on the other. (Brodie stays at the house, in Mary Jo’s old bedroom, by himself.) As near as I can count, 26 family members are at brother Carmine’s house. The kitchen island is laden with antipasto; cheeses, salame, meatballs, chips and dips, tater tots, a stray vegetable or two. Later, it’ll be piled with all sorts of deserts; Christmas cookies, buckeyes (a Cincinnati confection of chocolate and peanut butter), popcorn and the such. In between, we line up for a meal to feed three dozen; a big tray of pasta, homemade sauce, a huge salad, pounds of beef tenderloin, roasted potatoes, more cheese, leftover antipasto … it never seems to end. Wine bottles are emptied. Filled ones appear. The beer is plentiful. Later still, some 15 of us gather around a table for a trivia game, players screaming answers over the din. Downstairs, after the NBA and NFL games are turned off, karaoke is committed. A gift exchange, always a rowdy affair, is held in the living room in front of the Christmas tree. Lots of Bengals gear is given, pilfered, and exchanged. Pictures are taken. Later still on a rainy night, I pull up the car to the house to get Mr. and Mrs. D home. Mary Jo and Luke pile in. We return to Mr. and Mrs. D’s house. Recliners. TV. A circus from Monte Carlo on RAI. This, too, is the life.

On the day after Christmas, we leave early for the eight-hour drive back to Atlanta. We have a new passenger, a special-needs puppy that Mary Jo picks up earlier that morning that we’ll foster at home. Luke is in the back seat with Brodie. The new puppy sits on Mary Jo’s lap. The trunk area is packed. We stop in Lexington to fill up. We take a break for lunch outside of Knoxville. Luke and I slam down our sandwiches in a Jimmy John’s while Mary Jo watches the pups in the car. Luke and I talk. About food and family. About his plans after his return to California in a few days. About nothing in particular. This is the life.

We’re at a restaurant a walk from our house after our return home. The room, in an old farmhouse, is loud. The waiter is a little spastic. The food is good, but the meal is rushing way too quickly toward a conclusion. Across the table, Luke is in a new Christmas sweater. Mary Jo looks great. They are elbow to elbow, a setting that for years was so familiar, so everyday that, now, it’s almost aching to behold. We talk over the crowd. We laugh at the waiter. We rate our entrees. Luke snags a forkful of my trout. Mary Jo smiles. I forget to take a picture. This is the life.

We are walking around the neighborhood, something that Mary Jo and I are apt to do from time to time, on a 40-degree day. Christmas has passed. Luke is on a plane back to San Diego; we miss him already. After the weekend, a new year begins. We talk about our plans for — it’s hard to even fathom this, I swear — 2024. We’ll do a quick bolt up to Cincinnati again in January for a friend’s 50th wedding anniversary, a trip to New York City in the spring, a vacation to Scandinavia with Luke in the late summer, I’ll golf with three of my brothers in April in South Carolina, we’ll maybe squeeze in a visit to see some other friends or family members. We talk, too, about things we always talk about; money, politics, neighbors, friends and family. We talk about what we want to do, what we can do, what we should do, what we have to do. We talk about the house, the work we have, the work we want. Volunteering. We talk about people we know who are hurting. We talk about how time, so incredibly, flies by.

This, it’s so clear, is the life. It’s not the rare but beautiful moments when you can kick back, stick your feet up when the sun is warm and the time is right and mutter, “Ahhh … this is the life.” It’s certainly not just about them, anyway. And that’s OK. That’s actually good.

This is the life; hoping and laughing and eating, and worrying so much sometimes that it hurts, and being with those you love, and longing for them when you can’t be together, and scrambling through days long and short, and talking and listening and forgiving, and hurting, and trying to wring everything you can out of every single day, every minute, and vowing to appreciate it, all of it. Every day and every minute. Every tiny moment.

This is the life we get. This is the life we live. And now a new year, with all its glorious possibilities for living, is here again. It’s 2024, for god’s sake. 2024.

It’s a gift. The best one ever.