This year’s Christmas miracle happened early last Sunday morning.
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Clad only in his favourite Seattle Chargers red singlet, husband brought our step ladder upstairs and asked which Christmas tree I would like him to extract from the ceiling above our son’s bedroom?
Dear reader, as you know, I’m used to my husband’s ladder antics… that is, usually naked and regularly reckless.
“Darling … do you want Paul Kelly, Peter Fitzsimmons or Richard Flanagan?” I asked from my comfy Sunday sleep-in position, complete with a late morning cup of tea, a digestive biscuit and too many newspapers.
Historically, these three Australian literary hunks have helped in his stairway to heaven efforts by allowing themselves to be stacked!
Flanagan on the bottom, doing the heavy lifting, with Kelly in the middle and Fitzsimmons on top.
Between them, they gave him the extra inches required to get up into our roof.
No. He was going ‘clever commando’.
That was, while he would be naked, he would not be stacking heavy volumes on the top rung of the ladder to get up into the ceiling.
“I think I’ll borrow Neil’s (longer) ladder,” he said.
While it took another four days to borrow Neil’s ladder and finally get the tree out of the ceiling, I was grateful for this sign of wisdom, and he’s only 66!
An Italian Carol
On Wednesday morning I sat with my coffee, Maver’s crunchy dark roasted peanut butter on whole grain toast and wasn’t aware the news was being presented in Italian.
The coffee was hot, the toast was burned, just as I like it, and somehow the Italian felt comforting.
While I may be of generous Italian proportions, my language, she is not.
I sat, sort of blissfully frozen, in a space where I neither understood nor cared about the ‘news’, instead hearing only the music of lingo Italiano
My instant coffee was instantly a short black, my burned, boring toast was suddenly salami and sourdough and my day started in a less harried, soothing, imagined Italian kind-of-way.
To be merry (or not)?
It’s exactly four years since our first Christmas in our downsized mews.
In that time our son has gone from bench press to aftershave.
He’s left home, gone to university, studied in Missouri, had Christmas in Detroit, New Year in Chicago and Mardi Gras in St Louis, worked and studied in Melbourne, lived in three share houses and recently come home, to Launceston.
In that same time I spent two years adjusting to an empty nest.
First trying to kid myself I liked the pared back nature of this selfish, child-free time.
I didn’t.
Two years ago, even the laughter of the Afghan kids next door could make me cry.
My friend Kim knew how hard it was.
She is superb.
I hope you’ve got a superb friend.
By the third year I had stopped crying and was excited by the stories my son told of a life lived big.
I was happy.
What did I learn, dear reader?
I learned (again) that no feeling is forever and even the shattering sadness of no children at Christmas can pass; but it can be awful.
I’ve learned this lesson before.
Once during divorce, again when my father died and other times too private for these pages.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes for many people Christmas is crap.
If that’s you. I am so very sorry.
Be kind.
Live life in Italian, or whatever language soothes your soul.