The usual snowfall for Christmas Day in Victoria

Younger daughter was so disappointed that there was no snow this morning, she refused to accompany the Resident Fan Boy to church. Elder daughter fled out into the morning, and surprised her father at the cathedral. (He was so surprised, he didn't initially recognize her. This will take years to live down.)

Younger daughter recovered, and diligently participated in our other rituals.

The Snowman, by Raymond Briggs, is about an unexpected snow on a Christmas Eve, like the Christmas miracle we had a year ago. The Christmas special, based on the book, continues to be a poignant favourite with both my daughters, now no longer children.

The song "Walking in the Air", which features in the special, was sung by a boy soprano named Peter Auty, but it was 15-year-old Aled Jones who made it famous. This video, made twenty-five years after Jones' recording, is already more than eight years old, but I'm tired and my resistance is low.

On this strange and mournful day

I had been imagining what this morning was going to be like.  That was my first mistake.

Elder daughter returned from Victoria this morning after four stressful months of disappointing job-hunting.  I rose, and checked bus schedules, envisioning a reunion at the airport amongst all the other people happily clasping their relatives to their respective bosoms in pre-holiday rejoicing.

The Resident Fan Boy had a meeting, so I had to wait for younger daughter's lift to arrive before launching myself toward the bus stop.  I caught the bus by the skin of my teeth and congratulating myself, checked my phone, only to discover that elder daughter was already at the airport, having arrived just after eight.  The Resident Fan Boy had informed me she would be landing at about 9 am. I hadn't even made the connection to the Transitway yet.  While my over-tired daughter wept and over-reacted to my texts, thinking I was blaming her for this predicament, we forced a quick decision before I had to make the transfer.  She took a cab home, while I cooled my heels for twenty minutes at Hurdman Station for the returning bus.

I banished rueful thoughts from my head, blasting myself with favourite tunes through my earbuds.  Later, when elder daughter was welcomed and tucked up in her bed, I sat at the computer and dazedly scanned the headlines:  the aftermath of the hostage-taking in Sydney, Australia; a man who had systematically murdered his wife, her sister and her family, her mother, and grandmother and was still on the loose; the grieving parents outside a school in Peshawar, Pakistan where over 130 of their children had been slaughtered.

I thought about my lost scenario of joyful reunion, and about how my daughter had arrived safely, even evading the forecast freezing rain.

 I headed off in the afternoon to fetch younger daughter from her school far across the city.  We are joined by a raucous gang of Muslim students on the return journey every afternoon.  They're just as obnoxious as non-Muslim teenagers talking loudly in an enclosed space -- except they don't swear.  I remembered how they vanished from the bus for the days following the shootings in Ottawa last October; it took a few days for their high spirits to return.  Were they targets of anti-Muslim slurs, I wondered.  Had their parents kept them home? I thought of the #iwillridewithyou campaign in Australia after this café shooting, and of an upsetting article at the BBC website about the backlash against the campaign.

I took younger daughter to her favourite Second Cup and thought some more.  I considered the fact that I had two daughters returning safely home today, and that so many parents and other loved ones will not have that privilege ever again, because those they loved went to school, or stopped in for a coffee.

Then I remembered I was sitting in a coffee shop, and took younger daughter home to see her sister.

Disappointment and dub step

I sensed the setback looming when younger daughter hurried down from her bedroom and into the kitchen, before vanishing upstairs again seconds later.  While she'd been at school yesterday, I had slipped into her room to blank out her calendar because her singing school's June recital has been cancelled due to the time lost when her voice teacher was hospitalized last month.  I remembered that the kitchen calendar hadn't been adjusted and belatedly went to do it, then waited for the fall-out, which came this morning.

It was gentle as far as fall-outs go -- she sat with her morning tea making distressed sighs and declaring "Nothing is wrong!  I don't know what it is!" whenever I made inquiries.  Finally, I bit the bullet and asked if she was upset about the recital's being cancelled, knowing that saying it out loud makes it real. She fled upstairs, and I sat and sadly thought about the special dress she'd been saving to wear at the recital because her godmother had sent it, and wishing her teacher and the assistant had given earlier notice about the cancellation.  I recognize the stresses that they're under, but to a young girl whose every day is a maze of stumbling blocks, a lost chance to shine in one of the few things that come easily to her is a blow.

So we went out to lunch at a new restaurant in Westboro and watched the street performers at WestFest, and when we got home, I showed her this video, based on the first song she performed in public.


I've posted a video from cdza (Collective Cadenza) before; they're a bunch of depressingly talented (and good-looking) musicians based in New York. Both younger daughter and I were confused by "dub step" -- I'd thought it was a dance style, but online definitions assure me it's a music style, so there's something I didn't know before.

And yes, younger daughter seems to be recovering, another sign of how far she's come.