So you're the one.

My favorite part about the Christmas season is the movies. Not your typical "Miracle on 34th Street" or "It's a Wonderful Life", no what I love is that the movie channels break out the classics. Things like "Breakfast Club" and "Mary Poppins" and the Christmas Eve traditional showing of "Sound of Music". My mother in law and I liked to sing along to that one, back in the day when we lived in the frozen tundra of the north. We had to sing loud to drown out the incessant yelling of things like "Is that a cat in heat outside?" and "I think the kitchen window just shattered". But did that stop us? NO IT DIDN'T!

I have to say though overall my favorite movie that seems to only be shown this time of year is "Top Gun"

I was 11 when Top Gun hit the theaters and my BFF Heather and I begged and bribed and whined until her brother agreed to take us to the Bay Theater in his orange Chevy Nova and buy us tickets. Because we simply had to see it. Even at 11, I was a sucker for a man with a uniform.



Oh, I swoon to this day over perfectly pressed pants and a crisp shirt....



but let's not digress there, because we'll never come back from my cataloguing the virtues of a well kept man.

I remember sniffling and wiping my eyes on the sleeve of my sweatshirt when Goose died,



trying to act cool but then totally losing it when Meg Ryan hugged Maverick and told him to fly anyway; that Goose would have wanted him to.



Mostly though, I remember leaving that tiny, filthy theater with the unwavering desire to be Charlie.



I begged my mother for permission to cut and perm my waist length stick straight hair. I colored over my blond eyebrows with mascara swiped from my mom's makeup case and I practiced saying witty things like "Hemlock, is it?" as I donned men's undershirts liberated from my fathers drawers.



I studied up on things like her car (a Volkswagen Karmenn Ghia, that I would STILL love to have to this day!)



and I dreamed of afternoons lounging on the porch of my adorable beach front cottage



spent with boys fresh from the volleyball pit



How, exactly, I planned to accomplish these things was irrelevant. Dreams often lack specifics in my experience.

But oh how the weight and substance of those dreams carried me through many an angsty junior high night.

I think that's what this season should really be about, don't you? Not presents, not huge dinners, not rushing to and fro and stressing about how much it's all going to cost. The spirit of Christmas, to me, is the possibility that one day, all your dreams are going to come true.