Christmas 1987
Christmas is a time when traditions hold sway, a noisy, jumbled, joyous time, delight and wonder and joy, peace on Earth and good will towards all mankind.
It's a soft and hazy time, slightly out of focus, shrouded in snow and twinkling lights, and it's hard to place a single moment in its proper place in time, sixteen years of holiday memories, all very much alike. Meg looks back and the same tree stands in the same corner of the same room, covered in the same ornaments and the same lights, with the same boxes decorated with the same bows beneath its boughs. The same records play the same songs, the same cookies are cut with the same cutters, the same sights and sounds and smells. Like the poet, Meg couldn't have told you if it snowed for six days and six nights when she was twelve, or for twelve days and twelve nights when she was six.
The most recent Christmases, however, the ones that came After, those stand out, clear and sharp as broken crystal, edges rough and dangerous. Traditions and customs designed for four shift awkwardly to accommodate only three, or fall by the wayside all together.
The Ford house is quiet this holiday, cozy and comfortable to be sure, but calm, with none of the controlled chaos of Meg's childhood Christmases. She asks, as she makes the shopping list, how many they're expecting for Christmas dinner -- it's easier than asking the question any other way. And she's disappointed and angry and sad and ever so relieved, when she makes the list out in quantities for three.
On Christmas Eve, they go to church, and Meg does nothing more than mouth the words of hymns ancient and familiar. In the past, her sister, holding the other side of their shared hymnal (there are never enough to go around at Christmas), would nudge her and keep nudging her till she overcame reservations about her far less than perfect voice and started singing, if quietly. This year, like last, and the one before, Meg gives the hymnal to the woman beside her, and observes the letter rather than the spirit of "Silent Night."
There's no one to sneak downstairs at 3AM with, to make cocoa and turn on the Christmas tree lights and speculate about what's in the packages, and Meg sleeps until her alarm goes off at 8:00. There's no need to stand in the hallway outside the bathroom door, calling for her sister to hurry up, hurry up, hurry up because everyone's waiting for her to finish with her hair so it won't be a mess in the photographs that will be stuck in albums that are rarely flipped through.
Meg watches the clock, as they open presents and drink coffee, and converts for time zones in her head, and when she begins to suspect the phone will ring soon she pulls on old boots and new gloves and says she's going for a walk. She stays out until she cannot stand the cold any longer, and lets herself back in quietly as her father is hanging up at the end of the transatlantic call.
In the evening, her mother makes popcorn and her father builds a fire and Meg heats cider. When everyone is settled in, her mother pulls out a slim red book with a cracked red leather cover and reads aloud A Child's Christmas in Wales. Once, the book would have made its way around the room, and they'd have taken their turns reading and listening, but now her mother reads the whole of it, and Meg and her father listen, and the chair on the other side of the fireplace is empty.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves . . .
It's a soft and hazy time, slightly out of focus, shrouded in snow and twinkling lights, and it's hard to place a single moment in its proper place in time, sixteen years of holiday memories, all very much alike. Meg looks back and the same tree stands in the same corner of the same room, covered in the same ornaments and the same lights, with the same boxes decorated with the same bows beneath its boughs. The same records play the same songs, the same cookies are cut with the same cutters, the same sights and sounds and smells. Like the poet, Meg couldn't have told you if it snowed for six days and six nights when she was twelve, or for twelve days and twelve nights when she was six.
The most recent Christmases, however, the ones that came After, those stand out, clear and sharp as broken crystal, edges rough and dangerous. Traditions and customs designed for four shift awkwardly to accommodate only three, or fall by the wayside all together.
The Ford house is quiet this holiday, cozy and comfortable to be sure, but calm, with none of the controlled chaos of Meg's childhood Christmases. She asks, as she makes the shopping list, how many they're expecting for Christmas dinner -- it's easier than asking the question any other way. And she's disappointed and angry and sad and ever so relieved, when she makes the list out in quantities for three.
On Christmas Eve, they go to church, and Meg does nothing more than mouth the words of hymns ancient and familiar. In the past, her sister, holding the other side of their shared hymnal (there are never enough to go around at Christmas), would nudge her and keep nudging her till she overcame reservations about her far less than perfect voice and started singing, if quietly. This year, like last, and the one before, Meg gives the hymnal to the woman beside her, and observes the letter rather than the spirit of "Silent Night."
There's no one to sneak downstairs at 3AM with, to make cocoa and turn on the Christmas tree lights and speculate about what's in the packages, and Meg sleeps until her alarm goes off at 8:00. There's no need to stand in the hallway outside the bathroom door, calling for her sister to hurry up, hurry up, hurry up because everyone's waiting for her to finish with her hair so it won't be a mess in the photographs that will be stuck in albums that are rarely flipped through.
Meg watches the clock, as they open presents and drink coffee, and converts for time zones in her head, and when she begins to suspect the phone will ring soon she pulls on old boots and new gloves and says she's going for a walk. She stays out until she cannot stand the cold any longer, and lets herself back in quietly as her father is hanging up at the end of the transatlantic call.
In the evening, her mother makes popcorn and her father builds a fire and Meg heats cider. When everyone is settled in, her mother pulls out a slim red book with a cracked red leather cover and reads aloud A Child's Christmas in Wales. Once, the book would have made its way around the room, and they'd have taken their turns reading and listening, but now her mother reads the whole of it, and Meg and her father listen, and the chair on the other side of the fireplace is empty.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves . . .