We'll have to muddle through somehow

Have you noticed how when people sing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" this year, they revert to the original lyrics?

Someday soon, we all will be together, if the fates allow.  Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow...

Our Christmas Day may have been similar to other Christmas Days, but it's the line of days between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve that emphasize how this holiday season is like no other in peacetime.

I get poignant reminders, through my journals and via the FaceBook "On this date" feature, that our usual second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth days of Christmas were usually given to visiting and being visited, of seeing the movies most likely to be nominated for Academy Awards in the coming year, of making our annual trek to Butchart Gardens for the Christmas afternoon tea, even the occasional concert or play.

Yesterday, I had a series of tiny triumphs.  The current situation has slowed parcel delivery, so a handful of love offerings have not yet arrived, making the line of daily small gifts for the Twelve Days of Christmas rather sparse.  I grabbed a rare moment on my own to quickly hit a couple of downtown shops, and located a Doctor Who calendar for the Resident Fan Boy for the Eighth Day of Christmas, and a much-coveted video for younger daughter's Fifth Day of Christmas.  My finds were made all the sweeter, being from local businesses.

After lunch, we perused one of the sites for the annual Habitat for Humanity Gingerbread House contest.  Normally housed in a hotel lobby, they have been spread out to a number of different venues, where you view them through glass from the sidewalk.  A bit bleak, but better than nothing.

One of this year's candidates - yes, it's gingerbread

This morning, I awoke to "gremlins", resulting from a disturbing and accusatory dream of younger daughter's being back in school (thank god she isn't).  And as I lay there, fighting off the feelings of panic and failure, I also struggled with the recurring question that assails me every damn time:  Are these gremlins a delusion of the dark -- or an epiphany of waking clarity?  I fervently pray it's the latter.

Of course, then I checked my phone - big mistake - and encountered the doom-scroll of the situation in Britain, their hospitals with lines of ambulances outside, waiting for unavailable beds, and the country finally toppling into Brexit.  Of course, now elder daughter lives there.

Next year, all our troubles will be out of sight.  Because it will too dark to see them?

The darkness comprehended it not

The tree is down and, along with the decorations, is packed away in the storage locker. (Sure, I miss live trees, but I haven't been able to smell them for the past three Christmases.)

Our cards and lights, however, will remain up until Candlemas. The Resident Fan Boy, making his way home through the heavy January rain in the darkness of just after sunset, told me that he was never happier to see our lights glowing in welcome.

MAAN-i-cure

Not everyone sees out Christmas by seeing one's youngerdaughter crowned The Royal Fool at a Twelfth Night celebration and having oneself serenaded with sonnets by two august members of the Company of Fools. Okay, one so-called sonnet was actually the lyrics to "Poker Face" as recited by the very handsome AL Connors, but being compared to a summer's day by the very intense Scott Florence was dreamy. Too bad I knew he was acting.

Then Epiphany dawned and I got all bogged down taking the decorations off the tree, so badly that I had to beg the Resident Fan Boy to only play major key music on the computer and to hide the tree out back until it's time to leave it out for the city.

Thankfully, I found this on the 'net yesterday. It's nowhere during the play, so I must assumed this was something reserved for those entitled few who actually got to to the theatre in person. Take it away, Davy and Cathy:

The second day of Epiphany? (Oh, let's stop...)

Last night, we stripped our lovely tree. Younger daughter couldn't bear it and disappeared upstairs; she had told her special education class that this had been "the best Christmas ever". I sat by the television which was playing Takin' Over the Asylum" (the Resident Fan Boy screwed his courage to the sticking place and set up our new universal DVD player over the holidays), my knees strewn with the surviving icicles from our first married Christmas. We've always sorted them into blue, gold and silver piles, although the gold pile is getting sparse. I averted my eyes as the beautiful bushy balsam was squeezed out the front door. Now it's propped in a snow bank, pretending to be alive, waiting to be taken away by the city next Monday.

Theoretically, we can leave the Christmas decorations up until Candlemas (or, to use its ugly modern moniker Ground Hog Day, Imbolc if you're partial to Pagan), but the tree simply would be heartbreaking at that point. As it is, we may have to take the holly down before Candlemas Eve. Younger daughter's godfather sends it every year from Victoria; it's one of his few remaining pleasurable duties as Alzheimer's besets his fine engineer's mind. The indoor branches have been sucked khaki-green by the heating; and the outdoor branches have been blasted black by freezing rain, wind chills, driving snow and other hallmarks of a winter in Hades.

We will, however, leave the strings of Christmas cards up. Increasingly, cards and the mass-produced, impersonal, and usually unenlightening Christmas letters which some people think are mandatory arrive after Christmas and well into February. So it's official, people, such missives that arrive before February 2nd are not late.

I always thought the sentiment of "wishing it could be Christmas every day" unrealistic, undesirable, and sappy (didn't like the damned song either), but this year, oh, I wish it could. I've watched younger daughter float through this time delightedly, words coming easily to her for the first time in months. It won't be easy watching her spirit get squashed steadily until June.

I managed to post daily for thirteen day straight over Christmas, but I really prefer posting every three days or so. I do plan to try NaBloPoMo in February, a) because it's only 28 days; and b) because I want to see if I can do it. Provided, of course, I don't have to pay for the privilege. The "Terms of Use" thingie isn't that clear...

Not all epiphanies are jubilant

Our tree is lying on a rapidly melting snowbank outside, like Juliet on her bier, a trail of dull green needles at her feet. This morning, I escorted younger daughter to school, lamenting inwardly that due to our habitual lateness I had opted for my dainty blue slip-on snow boots instead of the massive and broad waterproof Sorels (with dainty ice-pink laces). It's unseasonably warm; the temperature is a balmy six degrees Celsius, and in response, there was a mist clinging to the top of the hill we must ascend from our mixed neighbourhood of New Edinburgh, which social-climbs its way through the "wanna-be" neighbourhood of Lindenlea to truly ritzy Rockcliffe Park. In this rarefied atmosphere at the top, the fog skimmed over the snow-enveloped benches and picnic tables, and I squinted to see if any kids were gathered in the schoolyard.

Younger daughter and I slipped in with some primary graders, thus avoiding the long trek around the building to the front door (where, due to the fact the PM's kids go here, one must be buzzed in), and found everyone still gathered around their lockers. I don't think we walk quite that fast; even on my own I can't make the just-under-one-kilometre trudge in under ten minutes, so I think the bell might have been delayed as a mercy to those of us struggling back into the quotidian.

Last night, for the first time in a few years, we invited friends over to have dinner and help us dismantle the tree for Epiphany. We started this custom early in our marriage to take the sting out of sweeping Christmas from the house, but in Ottawa, it's been hard finding people willing to come to dinner at any time, let alone in early January. I'm not sure whether we're unspeakably dreary company (possible), or whether Ottawans simply have a terror of reciprocation. Any acceptors of dinner invitations from us tend to have ties with other cities. Anyhow, this evening's guests were one of younger daughter's "guardian angels" and her mum, so younger daughter was unusually relaxed with the company. We put on some of our favourite Christmas CD's (Vincent Guaraldi's music for A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band), and showed off the decorations from past Christmases, telling the stories of the hand-made ones and the purchased ones and the ones with photos of the girls, while younger daughter danced in the living room. All the same, I went to bed sadly. It becomes more and more evident that one of the reasons this particular little guardian angel looks out for younger daughter is that she feels shut out by her classmates. I suspect she shields herself from the rejection by protecting younger daughter as well. I have been so grateful for this friendship opportunity for younger daughter who has been getting so much better in her social skills as a result, but am a bit heart-broken at the lonely price.