Christmas Aftermath

 

It's over.

My daughter is with her stepfather getting q-tips jabbed up her nose to prove she can enter Germany and Boston and resume her life there.

The fairy lights that have created magical awnings all over our little French village are being taken down. The chalets in the Christmas marché are being dismantled and the rabbits and donkeys have been returned to their farms. 

Our tree decorations painted over 50 years and combined with those collected as gifts or purchases in between then and now are packed into their plastic bag, even the eyeless moose ornament bought at Jardinland in early December. They await another year.

There were meals cooked at home and those eaten in restaurants, a luxury denied during the worse of the Covid. 

There was the three of us sitting on the couch, four if you include the dog, watching streaming of the Revels. This annual Christmas show was enjoyed when she and I lived in Boston and was joined by my relatively new husband the Christmas we spent together with her in 2019. We had walked through snow-covered Harvard Yard or Hahvahd Yahd to Sanders Theater. I was so excited for my husband to see what I had talked about, to participate in Lord of the Dance ritual. Now in 2021, even without the audience some 3000 miles away from Cambridge,  we could watch the mummers, hear their bells, watch their handkerchiefs wave and pretend.

Like all Christmases there are memories of every Christmas past spent together, spent apart but always with the people we love in our hearts many of whom are no longer with us in life.

The three weeks of my daughter popping in during the day will end tomorrow when we drive her to Toulouse for her flight. She has stayed in my Nest, the studio I bought for my retirement.

The Nest didn't work out like I planned for me but now makes a wonderful guest bedroom two doors down. When my husband reappeared in my life, the Nest was too small and we have made our home in Switzerland, visiting another flat in France often.

We will go to Switzerland for the winter in a couple of weeks. We have things to do there, some practical, like taxes and bills, some fun like taking Sherlock to play in the snow in the Jura and maybe Alps. I will never understand how a dog who avoids water like some horrible fate can think snow is better than biscuits and bones. And unless stopped by Covid, there's a Garou concert, friends to see, walks to take through the fields and city.

Having my adult child in hugging distance after two-long years of being separated by Covid restrictions was a great gift. I like my daughter. People sometimes do a double-take when I say that, but like is different from love. Yesterday it was so strong as we drank coffee and tea in one of the sidewalk cafés and just talked and talked and tal...

Of course, we will go back to the many computer messagings during the week, sometimes with visuals, sometimes not. 

Life will return to our normal within the virus-defined limits in Switzerland, France and Boston. The veil of sadness will blow away because the life we have is about as close to perfection as it is possible to have. Still, the memory of a kid-hug if not in my body is pressed into my heart and soul along with the fairy lights. 

I am so grateful.