12 Days of Christmas: Budd Lake

Nonno's basement workshop, frozen in time.

This Christmas season, I'm looking back at the past year with appreciation for where I live and the people and things that surround my home in New Jersey.

Recently, a daughter asked what time period I would like to visit if granted a wish.

The question surprised me, but when I looked at my wife, she answered without hesitation: "I'm sure you'd want to visit the future."

She was right. I told my daughter, "About 50 years from now" (after I'd surely otherwise be gone).

I don’t fear the Ghost of Christmas Future. I mean, what did Ebenezer Scrooge think was going to happen to him?

I try to view the world with a little optimism, and I’d be interested in seeing the improvements in society and advances in technology.

More than that, visiting the future would help me make sense of my life (and my daughters' lives too).

Steve Jobs once famously noted, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something…”

I’m always looking backwards, trying to connect the dots, trying to gain perspective, and make sense of everything.

Nonna's untended garden.

Visiting my grandparents' old house in Budd Lake, NJ, last month, it felt as if I were walking beside them.

Perhaps I was their Ghost of Christmas Future. We toured Nonna’s now-untended garden and Nonno's suspended-in-time basement workshop.

I took a selfie in the old mirror by the kitchen sink. When I was a boy, I used to watch Nonno shave while standing in his undershirt at that same mirror, stirring a whisk brush into a bowl, contorting his face as he applied lather, and giving me a wink when he saw me watching him from the breakfast table.

During the visit, I trust I showed my grandparents that, even though things had changed, their lives had left an indelible mark on their families.

I still love them.

50 years from now, my daughters can accompany me, and I want to look back on the impact of my own life.