CHRISTMAS PRESENT, AND YET TO COME

Here at L&F HQ our Christmas started, as usual, with all five of us in/on the marital bed, opening kilt stockings stuffed with badly wrapped silliness.  That of course was total bliss when the children were all small and warm and wriggly and hopelessly overexcited: now that they’re all adults (one 193cm, one 204cm) and they’re still all hopelessly overexcited it’s a bit more tricky and just as essential. Breakfast, dog walk, church – more from a somewhat puritan sense that we can’t have all the good stuff without paying for it in some way, than from any profound faith – lunch, presents, fires lit and trees glittering, and the slow slide into the evening and board games or reading, some desultory washing up and dishwasher loading …. we don’t do anything earth-shakingly different or original and that, I think, is the secret.  This year I have had to take a back seat on the domestic front and what a revelation that has proved to be!  Mr I and the young have blown their cover and demonstrated that they are more than capable of managing things without me: I have sat by the fire like the Aged Relative issuing orders and receiving offerings of presents and food and conversation and the occasional glass of something and, to my surprise, I have absolutely loved not running the show!  Family is absolutely central in my life, and how very fortunate I am that I have one, and that as our offspring find their own partners, we are able to welcome them in.  Even if that involves rearranging our bedroom furniture to make room on Christmas morning – what a privilege.