Christmas Eve walk to deliver more cards. Ginger wine with friends in front of their log burner. Explaining 10 to the minus 9, bit by bit. Many different concepts to be explained with my hands in the air and simple words. An amazing still night, trees dark against the last light in the west. The moon partly lit and partly almost invisible. Wood smoke from someone's fire. Steamed up windows in the pub. Total silence.
Midnight Mass, I sat there thinking and wondering why wanting to be fair and kind gets tangled up with a thicket of words. The best bit was singing the carols and greeting all the people I know. Familiarity. Also the gaps, all the people who aren't there.
The photo display on the window sill above my angels is just visible. My parents plus my brother and me. I wonder why my grandfather came over that evening to take a formal photo of us all? My father would have set up the camera on a tripod for him to click.
My mother in law plus all her brothers and both parents, shortly before her mother died in 1939. The other one on the right is my father in law, whom I never met. T and H take turns looking a bit like him as they grow and change.
These little angels were made by my grandmother R ages ago. I assume when my mother and her brother were small. They have survived all this time in 2 boxes which originally held headed writing paper. There are little foil twists, an old version of tinsel, plus see-though plastic icicles and small baubles to hang from the now-vanished small silver tree.
The lacy covers over the coloured paper dresses are made from paper doilies from all those years ago. Very delicate. No one else touches them, only me.
The star, just visible behind the gold bobbles, is cardboard covered in silver and gold foil. The pointy shaped bits are so delicate, but miraculously are still intact. Again, no one else is allowed to touch them for fear of tearing them. Actually, no one has even breathed a word about wanting to get close to them. I have defended them with my life.
And snow. We have the noise of wind tonight, but no snow whatsoever. There is some at uksnow.
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