Lauder Bronze
I was worried about a Christmas alone..... but the teenagers came to the rescue!!
My husband died in April this year, and I was haunted with thoughts of spending most of Christmas day alone for the first time, the four "children" aged from 25 to 18, all out for a lot of the day visiting with friends or boyfriend/girlfriend's families.....
Well, all they all stayed christmas eve, including my 5 yr old granddaughter, Teeghan, so 8am was getting up time........ yawn......... however, on ringing the 18yr old, who lives in an extension room in the garden, where the eldest was staying on his sofa bed, he was more excited than Teeghan, and had been awake already for 2 hours....... unlike his brother, who just didn't wanna get up yet, thanks, but Teegs refused to see if Santa had arrived unless he did, so there were four of us stranded on the stairs until the two boys arrived thru the kitchen....... yawn..............
Then the usual chaos of unwrapping etc., knee deep in paper and ribbons and boxes and the dog disappearing altogether under a mountain of cardboard.......and then the teenager fancied himself as Heston Bleumenthal, and decided to "help" with dinner..... apparently, unbeknown to me, - Heston always cuts lots of 'edges' on his roasters, the reason for which was lost to me in a haze of pink champagne, gratefully provided by my eldest daughter, anyway, he set to with the skill of Leonardo, carefully carving "edges" till the potatoes looked like diamond cut cherry tomatoes........ sigh...
Ryan the eldest was extremely busy with his new radio controlled helicopter.... yes, I did say Ryan, not Teeghan, but he was not very good with "landing" the thing, so it kept dive bombing anything in its sight, the cats, the turkey, my hair, the carefully carved potatoes in their pot of water...........
The girls had their friends arrive and much loud music and talking was going on about the night before and how tipsy they all were at Mass..... news to me,.... then my daughter's boyfriend, turned up, just as we were all having a sad moment thinking of my husband, and he couldn't be doing with "that crying stuff", so the usual row ensued as she told him to forget it and just go home again, but he didn't of course...
so then there were their presents all over the floor,too, and Teeghan was found playing not with her VTech laptop or her pink Flicker scooter or any one of the other 500 toys, but with mommy's new Estee Lauder make up palette......... a gorgeous shade of bronze all over her face, hands, the rug, dress, and a peculiar look about her as her eyes turned bright gold.......... mmmmmm
Meanwhile in the kitchen, we were learning to quickly bend in half to avoid the dive bombing helicopter which was now in full flight all over the dining room, then back into the potatoes, Heston was busy again, carefully and precisely chopping pancetta to stir fry with the sprouts, .... Ryan had contributed the ham, from which we surmised that the pig who's leg it was, Must Have weighed about 560lbs at least, and it was stuffed into the biggest pot I had, constantly boiling over, the turkey looked more like a pidgeon by comparison........
My neighbour came in to borrow milk, and stayed for over an hour, draining the last of the Baileys, much to the despair of the girls, who were busy using it as milk in their coffees, the pink champagne long gone......then my niece arrived, red eyed, tearful, and that was the end of me, cry cry cry.... God how we missed him... and there were more sad and thoughtful and trying-not-to-cry-too-much moments.
However, preparations for the lunch took over, "Heston" was now in full flight jobs were being given out to his siblings in a regimented fashion, much to my complete amazement beings who had never seen breadcrumbs before now expertly making stuffing, carrots, new to some, were being peel with precision...
At last, it was all ready, plates as usual looking every bit like a copy of the Sugarloaf Mountain, carried to the table.......and after ploughing through it for 20 minutes, knives and forks were put down and crackers were pulled and jokes and "pictionary" begun, no one remotely interested in what to do with the left over plates of food that seemed to only have had their stuffing balls removed.........
Then the sad part, to the grave with wreaths, pots of plants, a little straw made bear holding a conifer. from Teeghan..... it was soooo sad, I tried to encourage at least one decade of the rosary, but the kids all gave up after two hail Marys, and Teegs wanted to play snowballs, but, both of us loving to sing, and being in the church choir, I sang the first verse of "Silent Night", which echoed round the quiet graveyard, in the early dusk, with the little lights on the graves casting blue star shapes on the untouched snow covered ground, and it all had a slightly ethereal feel, - the acoustics were amazing and I was hoping someone would join in, but the kids stood, heads bowed, quietly tearful. Even Teegs was still.
I thankfully managed to get thru to the end without croaking,- I knew he would have been pleased... and I knew he would be having a great time with everyonen else up there.........
It was tricky to come home after that, all of us in a very different grieving mood now, and having, just having, to come round again for the next lot of visitors, more friends with their boyfriends and my son's girlfriends.... no one was still remotely interested in what to do with the left overs........ but all the lads were fiercly interested in the helicopter, now zooming with complete precision round and round and up and down throughout the entire house........ I took refuge in the bathroom, wishing I could just go bed, but another round of 560lb-sized-pig ham sandwiches were called for, -my daughter, now full of anything that came bottled, was slapping mountains of butter and mayonaise vaguely onto a whole loaf, followed by Desperate Dan size slices of the said ham, Ryan thinking it was a great idea all together to carve the whole thing into an Everest size mountain............
I crawled up into the corner of the sofa, sipping hot whiskey and trying to understand any of the things the adult kids were talking about... Ryan had gone to get his girlfriend, and they bought their two kittens back with them in their box....... much to the amazement of my 5 big cats and Molly .my Bichon Frise puppy...and ME!! eh?? two more cats in the house and poor Evie (my cat who died last Saturday) still frozen in her shoe box coffin in the garden shed!!! ........
the cats all disappeared, but Molly, fascinated, was totally hyper..... unlike the girlfriend, who just sat casually watching as the kittens raced round the floor, over the sofas, chairs, toys, up my chest and down my thigh, up the christmas tree and down again, and then into the dining room, where they were dive bombed by the helicopter brigade, now in full swing as more adult little boys went off to get their helicopters too .... oh please let it be over......... and it is..!!!
About the Author
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