Z and I were having an early breakfast. I’d just picked her up from uni for Christmas and we were sitting in a sunny window at a bougie place called Nourish.
She ordered the ‘Detox’ – a drink as blue as the piping on a Chuck E. Cheese cookie cake; vinegary as a pickled egg from a Margate chippy.
“You’re wearing your night eyebrows,” I said.
Even as it was coming out of my mouth, I could appreciate the outréness of the statement – a new way of saying she was completely and utterly katzenjammered/crapuloused/tremensed from the festivities of the evening before.
By the looks of it, I hadn’t chosen my words wisely; her night eyebrows were rucked like a bit of old carpet. It was hard to tell what was disgusting her more: her mother or her drink.
“It’s good for you,” I said as she started to cack like a cat on a hairball.
I paid the bill which arrived on the point of combustion and we got in the car. Two and a half seconds later, she was asleep under a monogrammed sorority blanket, and I was definitely ready for a stiff shot of Christmas, fingering fast for my ‘Christmummy’ playlist and prepping my heart for J.O.Y.
It arrived on a donkey – just a few pan-bongs in to Mary’s Boy Child. With the touch of a phone screen, I was up out of the Missouri steppes and somewhere in London. A little flat on Putney Hill, say, toeing a crackly stocking at the end of my bed. Or somewhere in Surrey, hanging nuts for the robins on my grandmother’s washing line.
Which is funny because Bony M’s iconic disco anthem to The Christmas Story didn’t register until later, by which time I was probably neither of those places but face-down in a church field in Wimbledon, utterly trolleyed by a bottle of sloe gin.
The song gets me every time. As the low, winter sunlight tickered between the cars and trucks, my eyes pricked and so did my throat. It was Christmas; I was feeling moved.
This, for a card-carrying member of the Wiccans, was interesting. There was clearly something else stirring in me beyond the sublime reverb of a steel drum, and the hunky deep voice that breaks in. They were talking about hope and little babies, and that – right there – is enough to get ya. But it was more to do, I think, with the line which ends …your very self you gave us.
It was easy to relate. My ‘very self’ was sitting right next to me; slumped – actually – like a body bag, snores steaming the windows, buckling the asphalt.
Yes, this bubblegum Jesus pop was speaking about something important: the unboundaried bond – the shared viscera – between mother and child. I liked it. Especially now, at Christmas when feelings bubble to the surface like a shingles rash. But I was getting carried away. Turns out, the ‘self’ it talks about, the me which had my eyes a-pricking, isn’t the (mother) Mary’s, but the Lord’s. And the credit – wouldn’t you know! – isn’t where it’s due.
When we got home and Z woke up, she was no less unimpressed by me. It didn’t matter. It was Christmas. It is Christmas. In all its gory, it is that.
AB - 24.12.23
Every time my adult children fall asleep in the car I am emotional, the trust is still there. Merry Christmas Alexa, may good drinks & food surround you & yours with warmth & happiness.
B! You had me in the back seat watching you both. So good. Happy Christmas from one bruja to another. xo