We're in that bit before the big season and I have to confess this is usually my favourite time of the Christmas period. The anticipation, the planning, the dreams. However I would be lying to you if I tried to pretend I have always found Christmas fun. Oh no, for many years Christmas was a duty to get through. An expensive, waist-increasing, depressing realisation that my life wasn't sparkly and I wasn't treasured. All of which is a bit bordering on Dickensian, but I have a feeling I'm not alone in having dreaded the Christmas season. Am I justified in this Bah Humbug attitude? I have a sneaking feeling I just might be.
We all look to our childhood for the magic of Christmas. For my parents it was a time of indulgence, within limits. We didn't do a great deal, and Mummy, ordinarily always one for very strict rules about sweets , put little trays of chocolates out after breakfast. My father had the self control of a labrador in a butchers when it came to christmas sweets and just couldn't resist popping the chocs in one after another after another. However most Christmas' were tinged with the pressure of my grandparents coming to stay. I don't really remember anything else happening. We did a visit to the other grandparents over in Buckinghamshire, and my northern grandparents came down for a sizeable time to make the journey worthwhile. My mother worked through most of my childhood as a teacher, and my memory is of them arriving within a day of breaking up and staying usually through to the new year, with a day visit to my uncle, or perhaps occasionally an overnight stay with my uncle and his family. All of which sounds very companionable. However my grandparents didn't really understand the pressures on my mother with work and family, often my father worked away from home so Mummy did a huge amount, and my grandparents did not adapt to the household, rather they expected my mother to keep house as they did. I suppose it's not unexpected, but I can see now, it was rather insensitive.
We had lived abroad for a while in the early seventies and my mother had acquired a taste for food rather more exotic than grandparents could stomach. Both pasta and rice caused them raging indigestion and could not be tolerated at the supper table. Ideally my mother would be expected to produce a joint, but they would put up with a chop if they had to. Every single night. Then there was the work that was made. My grandmother had a splendid way of assisting the household. Having lavishly praised my mother for the food she would gamely offer to 'rescue the clean', i.e. move the salt and pepper to the sideboard and put a few unused cheese knives back in the drawer. Thus my mother not only bought the food and cooked the food, she then had the joy of washing up the meals night after night. We did have a dishwasher quite early in my life, and I can see why. My grandfather was more of a decent sort and would do his bit with my mother in the kitchen. I think they liked the chatting time, but after a while my mother would be ground down by the full on appraisal of her housekeeping skills. My grandfather was a fine cook, sadly his onion gravy recipe died with him, and nobody could make piles of soggy white toast quite like him, but he was also more than a little bit opinionated. Supermarkets came into being during his lifetime, but he retained quite a suspicion of the quality and price of ingredients stocked by these shops. He was frequently heard to exclaim whilst accompanying my mother to the supermarkets that young women did not know what they were doing and spending far too much money. It was excruciatingly embarassing as my poor mother was shot death stares from other exhausted women whilst trying to move my grandfather onto to less controversial topics.
My mother was a very assertive woman in most ways, but oddly her parents could really push her around. I haven't quite sorted the dynamics out in that, and since she died in 2006, and they died in 1983 and 1984 the chances are I will never really get to the bottom of that one. I do well remember the visits to my uncle though. My grandparents would come back from at most a 24 hour stay and wax lyrical about how marvellous the food, the wine and the welcome were at my uncle's house. I don't know whether they really wanted to hurt my mother, but she did take it terribly personally that her fortnight's hospitality paled into insignificance next to her successful brother. Even as a child I could see they were playing one off against the other. Talking with my mother's cousin, aka MC, since the loss of my parents and husband, she said it was probably from the viewpoint of not 'ruining the child with praise' I well remember pride in one's achievements as being not necessarily a good thing, arrogance and showing off being terrible sins. It would never do to get above oneself. Poor Mummy.
The Christmas following the deaths of both my mother's parents, 1984, was a new era for the family. My mother decreed that we were to have an 'adult' Christmas. Drink, sweeties and turkish delight, all in lavish supply, but she didn't like turkey, so we had beef, and she decided we didn't need a tree. The tree of my childhood had been white and very fake. I loved it. The coloured lights shone magically from it's shiny branches and I will never forget the excitement of my brother and I breaking the rules and having a peek in the sitting room early on Christmas morning to see if 'he'd been'. Of course the white tree was outlawed in time as utterly naf, and replaced with a fragrant, needle dropping real one. But in 1984 my mother decided trees were for children and we'd all lost the magic of christmas in our hearts. We agreed with her to her face, but my brother had other ideas. We were both living away from home, with cars and rented flats, but kept in regular contact. He suggested to me we sneak out and buy a tree. The decorations were kept in the priests hole cupboard in my room (the house dated back to the early 15th century, so why not a priest hole cupboard?) so there would be no problem getting them out without her knowing. His plan was after Mummy went to bed on Christmas Eve we'd put the tree up and surprise her on Christmas morning. We didn't let Daddy in on the plan, it was just for us.
Well we got the tree and kept it hidden in one of our cars. Mummy laid on a usual Christmas Eve meal, with plenty of wine and after supper we slumped in front of the telly, chatting and drinking. Mummy had a fanciful streak, a sparkling romantic and magical side to her that she rarely allowed out. In the years through her illness that side of her was more or less extinguished, she could still laugh, but without the freedom of those earlier years. She loved the excitement of children at Christmas, allowed us to believe in Father Christmas for as long as we needed, and perpetuated the myth of the tooth fairy for years. Although it has to be said we were rarely visited by a very generous tooth fairy.
So there was Mummy, coping with her first Christmas as an orphan. She was 44 and she'd had a grim few years with both parents dying of cancer hundreds of miles from our home. She ploughed up and down the M1 and M6 to be met with awful spiralling problems, and now, here she was, without them. She had us, of course, and my beloved father, but the scaffolding of her life had changed. There is a solitude to being parentless that is quite hard to explain. For all those early years they held your hand, guiding you through the perils of life. As you grew up and away they would come and stand by you if needed, or watch you smiling across a room of strangers in pride and wonder at all you had become and achieved. Then, one day you look at a body in a hospital bed, and it is no more. The responsibility of being at the top of the family tree is quite scary, and for me doing it alone is utterly terrifying. Fortunately I have MC, my most brilliant and wonderful Aunt in all but name, and her glorious love has sustained me even though she lives abroad. A combination of Mr O'Leary's cheap flights and BT's overseas phone call package mean that I can have long chats with MC when she is busy elsewhere, and when she isn't, she can be here, just a short hop from Stansted, a journey my car probably do unaided.
That first Christmas without both your parents is tricky, because Christmas is so often seen as traditional and unaltering, when in reality it is always changing. Fashions come and go, but the myth is broadcast that Christmas is for the family, that solid, unshifting edifice that supports our lives. Of course the truth is often rather different, especially in these days when the dubious morality of meeting one's own needs is seen as a priority. I have a feeling it was probably always thus, but the rite of passage of coping without your parents is one we all face at some time.
My mother was trying terribly hard to make the best, but for her the magic of childhood was truly gone. To cope with the emotions she did what a lot of us would do, had a fair bit to drink. Then she wanted to go and see the stars outside. She wasn't really pickled, just a bit philosophical, and we wanted to humour her. We didn't want her sharp, if alcohol dulled, mind to cotton onto the surprise. We wanted the surprise. However Mummy decided she could see Father Christmas in the sky, and kept rushing out to check. It took seemingly hours to persuade her that Christmas Eve was over and it was time for bed. Fortunately Mummy and Daddy had a bedroom at the back of the house and wouldn't have heard us clattering about, even if the alcohol consumption hadn't knocked them out cold.
We struggled in with the tree and set about decorating it in our way. My brother and I had a rigid system developed over many years, and worked together well, enjoying the re-living of simple childhood pleasures. Finally late into the night we got to bed, hoping the efforts would be appreciated, and the day to come joyful.
Of course my brother and I slept relatively late that morning, but I was woken by my mother bringing in tea. She was beaming. She'd got up first, much as I do now, to put the kettle on, and went to check the sitting room. She told me she couldn't believe it and went to ask my father what he knew, and whether he'd had a hand in the new arrival. He, of course, had no idea what she was talking about, so she realised my brother and I must have been up to something. She loved the tree, and burbled and burbled all day about it being really thrilling and it feeling like it was a magic Christmas after all.
We had a lovely Christmas, a real grown up and magical Christmas. And my mother realised that Christmas wasn't just for children.
Sadly the years that followed that last Christmas I had as a single woman were never as amazing as that Christmas. There was another family's routines to adapt to, and our own family to raise in those joint traditions. My children as small people were as enraptured in the enchantment as I was, but sadly for them their Christmas' were tinged with a reality that made really enjoying Christmas very hard.
It was just 8 years after that orphaned Christmas that my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had an aggressive form of the disease and the treatments were equally savage. She endured the surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy and had several years in remission. Then she had a second primary breast cancer, and once again went through the savage treatments. One year my father collapsed and was found to have pneumonia and cracked his ribs in the fall. He had completely blocked the symptoms as he was determined to support my mother, and once she had the all clear, his mind gave way. Then in 2002 my father had a heart attack. I was in Florida having a family holiday as my father lay in hospital, and by the time I got back it was found that he would pull through, but that he needed a by-pass. So that Christmas it was Daddy waiting for life saving surgery rather than Mummy. When my mother was found to have cancer in her bones a few years later, we all knew this was something she wouldn't recover from. Her proper last Christmas was actually quite a jolly affair, we didn't know how long she'd got, but we'd been brave so many times and the worst hadn't happened, so we relaxed and made the best of what we had. Mummy died on 10th March 2006, and little did I know it, the worst was yet to come.
The Absent Father had met his Woman on the train during the second half of 2006, and if I'm honest I can't remember much of Christmas 2006. I was unhappy, reeling from the bereavement and the grief my father was going through. Unbeknownst to me, the affair was in full flow, and continued through 2007 with the Absent Father leaving for the first time in June 2007. I had him back in July 2007, a mistake I sorely regret making, but I still believed in goodness in those days. My father was devastated by the Absent Father's behaviour, but he had his own problems too. In at attempt to control his feelings he had taken to running on a running machine at the club he belonged to. One of those sports clubs attached to a hotel, with pools and spas. He and my mother made many friends at this club and his daily visits gave his life a structure and reason. But he found his back was aching whilst running. I put it down to the inadequate footwear he had, green flash pumps I believe rather than proper running shoes, and a lack of warming up and stretching. But the backache continued. Then my father collapsed and was taken to hospital with a suspected heart attack. No heart attack had taken place, but a young and keen eyed doctor sent him for a selection of tests, and we had the devastating news that he had pancreatic cancer. This was November 2007.
Christmas was once again a rather tense affair. Not only was the Absent Father fighting his demons, we were facing another 'last Christmas' My father had his first chemotherapy on Christmas Eve, and his second dose on New Years Eve. Looking back it wasn't that bad, the Absent Father cooked and was really solicitous and kind. I was so grateful we could pull together in this time and support my brave, bereaved and dying father.
The Absent Father left me for his Woman on 5th January 2008. He could live without her no longer. The house would be sold, of that I knew there was no doubt. What was to happen I couldn't contemplate, with my father unlikely to live beyond Easter, so I was told.
The year passed and my father lived on, always there for me, enduring the treatments that gave him those precious extra months. Whether it was the swimming that he carried on doing, or whether it was his grim determination to see me through this hellish phase, I don't know, but we came to Christmas, again. Daddy took the remains of the family, me and my daughters, to a local restaurant and we had a good time. To be released from the treadmill of christmas food shopping was amazing. No more did I feel I was taking an A level in Christmas. Even in those early days the Absent Father did little with his girls, especially at times of celebration. My father was there for my daughters, he was there for all of us, for as long as he could be.
My father died on 18th January 2009.
We moved from our family home in June 2009, leaving behind a wealth of memories embedded in the beams of our little farmhouse. The three of us had the next Christmas at our local pub. I remember thinking 'it's time, I can do Christmas again' as we left the pub after a big lunch. So I did. Last year MC was with us, but DN1 was not, staying with her boyfriend's family. This year both DN1 and her boyfriend are with us and MC is with her son. Ever year something changes, but not the love we have for each other. My parents' legacy to us. The best Christmas Present ever.
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