‘Don’t know if I want to do Christmas,’ a friend said to me this week. Which made me think about the day.
There’s something good about setting out the table, placing the chairs, getting out the long white tablecloth, the cutlery, the chopsticks, maybe some flowers? Greeting everyone, then getting someone to carry the heavy dishes through to the table, sitting down, encouraging people to help themselves to the food, taking a little yourself just for show because after all this you’re not sure you’re hungry? You know you will be, but perhaps not right now.
Then the desserts. The trifle, the fruits, the pavlova, the cake. A marathon but we are up for the test. All very leisurely, plenty of time, we start when we start and finish when we finish. It takes a few hours and that’s exactly the way it should be. Now you sit back. Time for the payoff. The poems they will read or the songs they will sing. The jokes they will tell and the do you remembers?
Well that’s the dream but lots of Christmas meals go less than smoothly. Adults arrive exhausted, the neighbours had a noisy party that ended at three am, the kids woke up at four. Their father is yawning and their mother asleep on her feet.The ham is tough, the fish like cotton wool, the vegetables overcooked, the pavlova a brick and there’s no oysters at all. There’s a large brown stain on the tablecloth that you only just notice when you put the plate of ham on the table. Kids are scratchy. So are adults. Someone tips the dish of beetroot all over the brown stain on the white tablecloth. You mentally check the bleach. Is there any? You check. There is no bleach. Then someone’s dog sicks up all over the carpet. The kids have been feeding it chocolate. You think to yourself, poems? Forget it. Everyone sits around the table sunk in their own thoughts one of which is never again. Never ever again.
So which will it be? A bit of both I suspect. I know what my friends means though. So much depends – not on a red wheelbarrow (sorry, William Carlos Williams) but as always, on the day, the will and the love.
Nga mihi mahana ki a koutou.
WednesdayBusk will be back the first week in February. Thanks for reading the busks and for your comments through 2017. Happy times in 2018 everyone and every little while remember to read a poem aloud to someone. Spread the word…
Renée
