real Christ­mas

The best-laid plans…

I’m not meant to be blog­ging.  I’m meant to be just a few hours away from my Con­necti­cut farm­house, ready to pull the Christ­mas trees from the wait­ing barn, hang all the sil­ver balls and orna­ments, race to the shop for wrap­ping paper, jump over to the gro­cery for all the ingre­di­ents for our mam­moth Sat­ur­day din­ner, get John’s mom’s room ready, put the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas Eve oys­ter stew on the stove, the dec­o­ra­tions just so…

Instead, I’m sit­ting in my Lon­don liv­ing room wait­ing for John and Avery to get home from “Har­ry Pot­ter,” her con­so­la­tion prize for being here.  Two words: flight cancelled.

As you all know, I am extreme­ly fond of my adopt­ed home and even find many things about it — sausages and the accent, for exam­ple — supe­ri­or to Amer­i­ca.  But there’s a can’t-do approach to snow removal here in Eng­land that bog­gles the Mid­west­ern Amer­i­can mind.  Here it is Wednes­day, and Heathrow is still reel­ing from the four inch­es that fell, let’s see, on Sun­day.  It’s sim­ply infuriating.

How on earth am I going to arrive on Christ­mas Night, with all my tra­di­tions turned upside down, and pro­duce a prop­er Christ­mas, all the shops being shut?  I can tell you that yes­ter­day was chal­leng­ing for me, who thrives on every­thing turn­ing out just as I want.  What was I to do?

I spent the after­noon on the phone break­ing the news to my broth­er in law that I won’t be there to make the gravy, to the girl who was to hous­esit for us, arrang­ing for her whole fam­i­ly to spend the hol­i­day here enjoy­ing our tree and dec­o­ra­tions.  A per­verse con­so­la­tion there: I’m not spoil­ing her hol­i­day, Heathrow is: her fam­i­ly’s flights were can­celled too.  John called his mom, who is brave­ly going to go ahead of us and open up the house the day before Christ­mas.  And our dear, dear neigh­bors across the road have kind­ly filled our refrig­er­a­tor to wel­come her.

But still.  A dis­ap­point­ment.  What is Christ­mas with­out all the prepa­ra­tions, the can­dles on the man­tel lit, the fire flick­er­ing over the sil­ver balls on the tree, all the right dish­es cook­ing at the right time, the stock­ings ready for their bur­dens of chocolate?

We pushed it all aside to run off to the wretched, incom­pe­tent air­port to pick Avery up from her trip to St Peters­burg.  The var­i­ous par­ents gath­ered in the Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals area, trad­ing sto­ries of the texts we had received from our girls extolling the virtues of the Her­mitage and the shop­ping, the ici­cles and the snowdrifts.

And sud­den­ly there she was, red-cheeked with excite­ment, topped by an enor­mous fox fur hat, giv­ing and receiv­ing hugs from all her new best friends, shout­ing, “Mer­ry Christmas!”

“It’s BOIL­ING in this coun­try!” she said, her down jack­et falling off her shoul­ders.  “And you call this snow?!  As we were land­ing and we saw all the snow that had brought the coun­try to a screech­ing halt, we just had to laugh!”

We post­poned telling her to what a screech­ing halt her own plans had come to, and lis­tened to the sto­ries of room after room of lapis lazuli, mala­chite, carved plas­ter and gild­ed ceil­ings.  And presents!  Icons, scarves, a tiny matrush­ka doll set, the tini­est inside being the size of a pop­corn kernel!

Her mer­ri­ment was con­ta­gious!  The fur hat perched on her head, she leant for­ward in the car and talked a blue streak, sto­ry after sto­ry of the recur­ring jokes among her friends, the ter­ri­ble bed she had to sleep on, the awful food (“uncooked fish, but not fish that was meant to be eat­en raw, just not COOKED!”), the end­less cups of tea with more and more sug­ar to make them palat­able, the fun of try­ing out her Russ­ian!  “I keep say­ing ‘pazhul­ste” and ‘spa­si­ba’ to every­one now!”

We got home and sat imme­di­ate­ly down at the din­ing room table to upload all the won­der­ful pho­tos of her trip: “This is the chan­de­lier tour of St Peters­burg!” and to hear all the excit­ing sto­ries.  How thrilling to have her tell sto­ries of an exot­ic place we’ve nev­er been.  “I want to take you there some­time and show you everything!”

We ate her favorite din­ner of broc­coli and toma­toey, cheesy pas­ta, and lis­tened end­less­ly.  Then with the con­fes­sion that she had changed clothes not at ALL dur­ing the trip, mere­ly adding lay­ers as the days went by, she went off for a long, hot, bub­bly bath and I start­ed the wash­ing machine hum­ming in the background.

John and I sighed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and admit­ted that we were worn out!  The dra­ma and dis­ap­point­ment of the can­celled flight had been com­plete­ly over­whelmed by the joy of hav­ing Avery safe­ly home.  I had­n’t admit­ted to myself how far away she felt, how inse­cure I felt being sep­a­rat­ed from her over such a dis­tance, both phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al.  I had­n’t admit­ted it until she returned, and I looked at her glow­ing, beau­ti­ful, famil­iar face and felt sud­den­ly, “This is all I need for Christmas.”

And it’s so true.  Who cares what day of the month it is when we final­ly walk in the door of Red Gate Farm and fold John’s mom in a hug?  What dif­fer­ence will it make whether or not the dec­o­ra­tions are up when my nieces Jane and Mol­ly are run­ning around screech­ing and Avery is look­ing down at them from her great teenage height?  Once my stal­wart hus­band car­ries in the Christ­mas tree and lights the first of the hol­i­day fires, it won’t mat­ter a bit that I did­n’t get to the gro­cery!  Thanks to my friends across the road, the house will be warm to receive us, and when my sis­ter and broth­er in law arrive for what­ev­er din­ner we’re able to man­age, we’ll all be together.

Maybe I need­ed a lit­tle snow, a lit­tle delay, a lit­tle dis­rup­tion, to shake me out of my sil­ly wish to con­trol all the details.  Our Christ­mas will be right on time, when­ev­er it happens.