in the wake of Christmas

Oh, a quiet day today, mak­ing turkey soup, tak­ing a walk with Anne and lit­tle Kate across the road, watch­ing Kate choose every dirty snowy pud­dle she could find. “I can’t believe it was snowy here yes­ter­day, and today, green every­where,” Anne mar­velled. We could hear the rain thun­der­ing down all night.

The stormy night suited my mood of reluc­tant good­byes to my fam­ily: my mother, father and brother: after two days of rem­i­nisc­ing, gig­gling over silly shared jokes, family-familiar quo­ta­tions from movies, “But, Har­lot, Scunny!” “I saw it in the win­dow and couldn’t resist it,” dis­cus­sions of old high school friends (“I swear he had a crush on you but your nose was always in a book!”), analy­sis of the plots (truly) of “Days of Our Lives,” watch­ing the lit­tle girls and Avery share jokes with my mother, my brother play­ing a toy gui­tar for them all, my dad watch­ing over all. He was a tremen­dous help in the kitchen on Christ­mas Day, qui­etly wash­ing dishes, super­vis­ing Jane’s help with my cheesy spinach, lis­ten­ing to all the gossip.

I find if very sad that fam­ily, and fam­ily time in our lives, is such a rar­ity. I spent the first 18 years of my life sim­ply cocooned with my fam­ily, close and extended, and that life pro­vided a sense of warmth and accep­tance that I feel again when­ever I am with my mother and father. Why must it be for two days at a time twice a year? It is not enough time, ridicu­lously not enough, to make them real­ize what they mean to me. But it’s what we have. Per­haps this year they can make it to Lon­don, and we can have the fun of show­ing them our house, Avery’s school, our lit­tle world. Until then, we’ve had our Christmas.

And it was con­trolled INSAN­ITY! Sim­ply loads of pack­ages for every­one to open, espe­cially as I feel com­pelled to wrap books sep­a­rately, to be appre­ci­ated on their own, each one, and of course I give mostly books! A pull-tab “Miffy” for baby Molly, which was grabbed by five-year-old Jane imme­di­ately. My sis­ter broke in.

“No, no, Jane, don’t break that. Let Molly break it for herself.”

There were the remote-controlled heli­copter races between John and Joel — John’s gift of the year to every­one he loves, and no mat­ter my skep­ti­cism, every­one in fact loved it! Hov­er­ing near our heads, threat­en­ing to go into the dish­washer, to cut off my knees, to ascend into the double-height kitchen ceil­ing where no one could reach it! Engine-obsessed Jane was in heaven.

Avery retreated now and then with a favorite Sher­lock Holmes book and a throw, to a remote cor­ner, but was soon fol­lowed by Jane, and then by every­one else who wanted to be with Avery and Jane! Per­haps the most peace­ful moment of the entire day: with Joel in the barn, look­ing up at the repair braces we’ve been pay­ing for and receiv­ing email pho­tographs of all autumn. The whole project looks mas­sively offi­cial and sup­port­ive and quite as if the Big Red Barn might well stand up for another 200 years. Joel and I took sev­eral deep breaths in the dark­ness of the barn and then plunged again into Kitchen Christ­mas Cen­tral, to man­age the chaos.

Chief among whose ele­ments was… the Raw Turkey! Slow-cooked was the goal. How long it would have had to cook, at 250 degrees F, I do not know, in order to be ready for din­ner, but con­sid­er­ably, painfully longer than the 5 hours allot­ted to it. Joel, who is my ace carver, approached with carv­ing knife. “Kris­ten, look at these juices…” Run­ning red and pink. Awful. Panic. “Can we all, includ­ing the mashed pota­toes and spinach, wait for another hour?” “We’ll have to!” So Joel dis­mem­bered Mr. Turkey and sep­a­rated the breasts from the ster­num and I turned up the heat (all I was capa­ble of) and we sim­ply waited.

Finally the turkey was deemed edi­ble, the mashed pota­toes had sur­vived, the very rosemary-y gravy whisked up with cream, the stuff­ing out of the oven and the apple gone in. We gath­ered around the table. Feast­ing ensued, and by the time we got to the pies with whipped cream, every­one was feel­ing slightly mad with overeat­ing and fes­tiv­ity. “Don’t lick the rein­deer!” I had to warn dear Jane, who saw the ceramic cen­ter­piece cov­ered with stray whipped cream. At this, my mother choked into her pecan pie, she who taught us all to love phrases that we feel cer­tain have never been uttered before. “Don’t lick the rein­deer!” Classic.

So the hol­i­day has come and gone again. Today we were tired. We took a walk up the meadow to John’s Dad’s Bench, sat to recover our breath, to remem­ber our time with him two years ago, to be grate­ful, regret­ful, all at the same time.

And tomor­row: into New York for shop­ping and the Nut­cracker! That’s life for you, isn’t it? Just when I think I will take a moment to wal­low in nos­tal­gia for my child­hood, in my love for my too-far-away fam­ily, tomor­row appears with its own delights. A les­son, I’m sure, to be learned in the New Year…