There's no getting away from C-Mass when you've got a kid
We have had
C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S
on the agenda EVERY day. For ever it seems. There always was the Santa obsession, even in summer, but now true to her 'I'm different. Pink looks like bird poo. Dolls are boring' nature my darling has now dumped Santa and opted for Snowmen. A seasonal change for the best.
OR the discarding of Santa could be to do with our visit to his Grotto. Later I called something 'grotty' and Eva said 'yes, like where Santa lives' and I had to agree. We went to Harrods which is, for anyone who has never been (myself included until this time), an amazing place. Another world. With no signs. Finding a lift, a toilet, a set of stairs was such a venture. You'd expect such a grotto in itself to have a rather magical hidey hold for old Red Hat Fat Tum. We waited in a queue for an hour while his Helpers gave us gingerbreadmen which Eva tucked into with all the right malice 'eek ... my head is gone!' 'AGH! I'm just a leg!!' We knocked on the Grotty door and in we went to a Twin Peaks square red room with a big fat cockney on a green chair in a bag wig. 'no way' I thought. Eva was crest-fallen. I don't know what she thought. She's refused to speak about it and can be bribed only to nod or shake her head in response to questions on a Santerial subject. But I think already, age 3, for her the myth is dead. I'm secretly glad. As I am about pink and bird poo. Of course.
But not so C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S. That is alive alive oh. Snowmen to be spotted everywhere and I swear she has the vision of an eagle with a telescope. She can spot a cm big snowman on a roll of wrapping paper across a supermarket. 'I saw something! I saw something!'
The most miraculous of days yesterday. Eva did her first, first EVER Nativity play with her little school friends. She was (is!) an angel in long white dress with tinsel crown and way too big wings which slipped a bit and she couldn't wait to get off. For all these weeks of steady rehearsals she's been too shy to sing with her class but has given me private performances at bedtime 'with all the actions'. On the day she triumphed. She sang her heart out, gazing steadily at me the whole time. I was transfixed, wedged into that moment, recording every blink of her eyes.
Later I thought how cliched I'd have found myself in that moment before knowing what loving a child is like. And I tried to work out WHY those moments are so overwhelmingly poignant and painfully passionate.
But I can't work it out. It's like trying to describe a colour that doesn't yet exist.
C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S
on the agenda EVERY day. For ever it seems. There always was the Santa obsession, even in summer, but now true to her 'I'm different. Pink looks like bird poo. Dolls are boring' nature my darling has now dumped Santa and opted for Snowmen. A seasonal change for the best.
OR the discarding of Santa could be to do with our visit to his Grotto. Later I called something 'grotty' and Eva said 'yes, like where Santa lives' and I had to agree. We went to Harrods which is, for anyone who has never been (myself included until this time), an amazing place. Another world. With no signs. Finding a lift, a toilet, a set of stairs was such a venture. You'd expect such a grotto in itself to have a rather magical hidey hold for old Red Hat Fat Tum. We waited in a queue for an hour while his Helpers gave us gingerbreadmen which Eva tucked into with all the right malice 'eek ... my head is gone!' 'AGH! I'm just a leg!!' We knocked on the Grotty door and in we went to a Twin Peaks square red room with a big fat cockney on a green chair in a bag wig. 'no way' I thought. Eva was crest-fallen. I don't know what she thought. She's refused to speak about it and can be bribed only to nod or shake her head in response to questions on a Santerial subject. But I think already, age 3, for her the myth is dead. I'm secretly glad. As I am about pink and bird poo. Of course.
But not so C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S. That is alive alive oh. Snowmen to be spotted everywhere and I swear she has the vision of an eagle with a telescope. She can spot a cm big snowman on a roll of wrapping paper across a supermarket. 'I saw something! I saw something!'
The most miraculous of days yesterday. Eva did her first, first EVER Nativity play with her little school friends. She was (is!) an angel in long white dress with tinsel crown and way too big wings which slipped a bit and she couldn't wait to get off. For all these weeks of steady rehearsals she's been too shy to sing with her class but has given me private performances at bedtime 'with all the actions'. On the day she triumphed. She sang her heart out, gazing steadily at me the whole time. I was transfixed, wedged into that moment, recording every blink of her eyes.
Later I thought how cliched I'd have found myself in that moment before knowing what loving a child is like. And I tried to work out WHY those moments are so overwhelmingly poignant and painfully passionate.
But I can't work it out. It's like trying to describe a colour that doesn't yet exist.