Somebody asked about messy Christmas stories. We have a few. We think we did the best we possibly could with them all, though, and at least we had self-determination and freedom is a wonderful privilege.
My son and I were farmsitting in Cornwall when he was 13 and it was cold and rainy so we went to Tintagel and never found the big castle in the clouds! We had splurged on a special roast beef for dinner but the oven broke so we had to cook the roast on the stovetop -- sigh. And one of the orange kittens (which colour-matched the chickens) got stuck in the roof and I had to cut a hole in the closet ceiling to rescue him. The cold cloudiness was really perfect for seeing the moors of Cornwall the first time -- you really can get lost 100 m away from your car.
Another Christmas, when Yarrow was 5,I had a baby on Dec. 17 and gave her away on Dec. 25. She'd doing well -- I couldn't have single-parented two children competently, and she's getting all the advantages of wealth and privilege. We see her now and then but as perhaps often happens, the adopting parents were stingier than they had promised to be and we didn't get to play the role in her life that we had hoped and been promised.
Another Christmas, when Yarrow was 6, we went to visit some old old friends of mine in France, but it happened that the couple's marriage was really in the middle of falling apart, and Yarrow and I chose to leave their place Christmas morning rather than endure the drama (which was leaking onto blaming us for various weird things, as angry people often do). We had to wait all day in the tiny rural train station for the train later that afternoon, but luckily the nice train man gave us a ride in his car to a place open for food, so we had food and we played a lot of cards and we still think of that day as the one that really made us think that Christmas is about being with each other, not all the decorations and baking and trappings. We've never been much on gifts since.
And then this year, when Yarrow's 15, my 18-year-old cat was dying, so we cancelled all of our plans and didn't attend any of the kind invitations we received, because we didn't want her to die alone at home. Cancelled our travel plans to Alberta. And we just had two weeks of intense love and didn't really have any presents at all but we had each other and that was precious.
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