And to all a Good Grief!

 

Tis the day before the day before the night before Christmas, and all through the house, each table and flat surface is piled with stuff. At present the master of the house and the visiting daughter are both roaming through the grocery stores of our community, garnering foodstuffs. Foodstuffs that they will bring home and add to the already bulging refrigerator and pile onto the already laden counters in the kitchen. Later they will cook, and I am expecting more cookie tins to join the four (or more, I am too lazy to go and count) tins already there. I expect new and fresher bagels. I expect fruit, vegetables and treats to appear. It has occurred to me that it is a very good thing that we do not have a chimney, down which a droll little fellow could appear with his sack. By the time I get son-in-law’s massive box wrapped and under the tree, there is not going to be room for anything more.

 It’s Christmas time in the household. The tree needs water (waiting for the agile daughter to crawl underneath and fill the reservoir), needles from the tree already decorate the stairs, I still have presents to find as well as wrap, and I have a return to make since one of the online retailers I patronised has sent me the wrong parcel. The bag for the return is presently cluttering up my office, since I have to phone and arrange a pickup and this, given where we live, is not going to be a fast job. Other jobs involve me baking pies, and the finished products will have to be kept somewhere until the Festive Meal is finished. Oh, and someone has to drive half an hour in to town and pick up the turkey on Christmas Eve. And it will not be in a sleigh with eight tiny reindeer either.

 Bah, humbug. This is the (I counted) fifty-sixth Christmas that has found me in charge of the Feast, the majority of the gift buying, wrapping, tagging (just did that. I recall a sad story told by a friend of mine who, one year, wrapped the presents as she bought them but did not tag them. On Christmas Eve she had to unwrap quite a few to figure out who got what) and keeping the house somewhat clean. Another fond festal memory of mine is of my mother, one Christmas when they visited us, vacuuming madly in the living room on Christmas morning, after the Grand Unwrapping had taken place. Mostly what she was vacuuming was, in my recollection, dust and dog hair. I have a photo of this somewhere, as I was on a mission to record the festivities, and to *** with cleanliness. Mother did not agree. But she loved me anyway.

 Mostly my parents stayed home for Christmas, as did JG’s parents. Several years found us with our feet under the paternal Gilmour table, and once JG’s sister hosted us, my parents and all of her family for, I think, Christmas dinner, when our children were small. There were at least three tables set up to manage this crowd, but the amazing woman never turned a hair as I recall. This year the visiting daughter who, she says cheerfully, likes to cook, has taken over the kitchen. Cooking and clearing up. Last night we had a lasagna for dinner that she spent most of the afternoon concocting and, as her father stated (loudly and clearly) it was far, far better than the frozen ones I seem impelled to buy. I love lasagna. I love my daughter.

 Each Christmas we leave, in the mailbox and in the holder driven into the ground for the purpose, cheques for the mailman and newspaper carrier. I just got a phone call from the latter of these to let me know that I had put the mailman’s cheque into the newspaper box. And this after I had marked the envelopes before I trudged down the lane to put them out. I may be impelled, now, to check all the gift tags to make sure I have not confused more labels. Confusion, my constant companion in this my eighty-first year, is now out of hand. And God Bless Us every one, especially me, as I surely need it.