Today is Christmas. It’s just after 9am in the UK and I’m sitting upstairs alone in our home office drinking coffee and trying to get ahead on coursework for the Master’s degree I started this autumn. It’s for Creative Writing this time as I’m trying to go back to the true love of my life — writing.
I’m finding this Christmas difficult. There are some immediate reasons for this difficulty, but I won’t share as this is a public post. But I think there is a deeper reason why I feel the need to be alone. I miss my dad today.
It’s been seven years since the last Christmas with him. I postponed a trip to London that year because I knew how much my dad loved Christmas and I didn’t want to leave him. It had been a hard year for him and I felt like I needed to be there.
To be honest, I can’t really remember that Christmas. I’m sure it was like almost all Christmases for my dad – not up to his expectations. He always wanted a perfect Christmas. Happy family, good food and nice gifts. He wanted the Norman Rockwell Christmas. Ours were never like that. They were usually nice but humans will be humans and none of us were able to quite meet his what he had in his head.
I wonder if it would have made him feel better if he knew that all these years later, I would long for some of those traditions he (and my mother) shared with us. I especially miss our Christmas Eve tradition of having a bunch of hors d’oeuvres type foods that most of us participated in making. There was plenty of wine or margaritas or Jamesons (or all the above). The children were treated to non-alcoholic pina coladas with as many maraschino cherries as they wanted. We would open presents from family on Christmas Eve and eat dessert. It wasn’t always perfect, but even my grandmother getting offended by just about anything had become part of the tradition.
I am pretty sure that this tradition is gone for me now that I’ve moved away from the people who once shared it with me. It was bound to happen. Traditions you shared with your family don’t always translate when you meet new people.
Anyways, I’m going to end this now. It’s not really doing what I hoped.
I wish all those who are reading this and who celebrate one of the many holidays attached to this season have a happy one. Enjoy your time with those your love. Take care of yourselves.
On My Mind 