CHRISTMAS AND THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD
Listen, less we miss the echo in the dark, the dank echo of a
month or so ago when the world was chaotic and had charisma and
character and was Christmas! When the weight of the world lay at the end
of our beds; appeared, when our gentle snoring had at last brought our
genie of a father unsteadily up the stairs to listen to us breathe,
and safe in the knowledge of our sleeping gently lay his burdens down,
fearing to wake us as he lurched and swayed from room to room, his
clanking, clinking clutch of stockings reeking of tangerines and tin
and the lick of pink sugar-mice. A whiff of a cigar lay dangling on his
lips leaving its stain of a smell to mingle with the odour of sherry
and pine needles.
On waking with excitement at about 6 0’clock, the weight of
our world at our feet, we’d rummage around nibbling on the mice and
smelling the fruit and tooting on our tin, we would meet on the landing
and creep down the stairs and into the lounge and make for the
forbidden tree of Good and Evil that dripped its silver and winked its
lights over forbidden treasure wrapped in colours that were ripe for
the peeling. Oh what soft or hard fruit lay within? Then shoving and
shushing and giggling we’d stuff ourselves with chocolate not noticing
the pad of parental feet on the soft carpet on the curve of the stairs
ordering us up to bed again where we contained our overflowing joy.
Breakfast at last: Grapefruit, eggs and bacon and buttered toast, our minds already on the prospect of presents. “Thank-you-God-for-a-good-meal-and-please-mummy-can-I-get-down?”
We sang this mantra at breakneck speed already half way off of our
chairs where we paused, waiting for the ‘yes’ and when it came we
scrambled out in the garden to try out the latest toy or test our newly
acquired skills at target practice, lost in a world of wonder and
ice-coated trees.
We didn’t want it to end.
The carols we sang heralded the coming of Christmas and called to us
in every shop and alleyway, every corner of every street. We could
almost taste the mince pies and Christmas pudding. The smell of warm darkness:
that smell always came before Christmas when the evenings drew in
sharp as a tack and the still of the evening was pierced with the
robin’s tic tic tic warning-call that filled the semi-darkness,
and the smell of the damp earth with the leaves rotting down in time
for winter. That was glory for us, the real and the ‘coming’glory. The smell of darkness was Christmas. And as long as I live will ever be!
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