Tom has just come into the steamy, biscuit-filled kitchen, and found me in tears, again, at the Carols from Kings. As regular as the annual Carols from Kings I'm to be found, 3pm GMT on Christmas Eve, half-filled glass of Baileys, wet drips plopping from my nose. It sums up where I'm not, today. With whom I'm not, today. It evokes deep homesickness, even though my home, for now, is here.
Christmas has so many spliced through experiences, both now and then, multiple layers evoked in a flash. Unpacking the Christmas tree decorations. The curly haired chorister painted by SecondBorn, aged three, at his much-loved Preschool. I love his exuberant hair, from a carefree time of innocence. I love that he's still with us, one of the yuletide family. I'd save him in a fire. The Christmas decorations from different stages: the baubles with glitter inside, assembled at toddler group; the gingerbread men and women bought from the Lakeside Special School Fete; the Maasai beaded decorations and tin angels, bought from community projects here in Kenya. The vile flashing Santa broaches, bought in a moment of weakness many moons ago, - source of great peer envy at school - which lurch on, batteries undinted by my dislike. Where we've had to leave much - so many - behind at (the other) home, somehow the Christmas tree decorations become a capsule experience, an intense standing in for much which matters at this time of year.
Our post can take up to six weeks to reach us at peak times. It arrives once a week, via Tom's work, if we're lucky, if there isn't a hitch. We generally have a ceremonial opening of cards in early February. Yesterday a Christmas card arrived from our Quaker meeting in UK. The carefully signed names, the personal comments, it mattered as much as a leaving card when departing a job after many years. Reminders of deep friendships which are still there, despite the distance. Which matter to us, but we are the ones who moved on. It's lovely to feel that our gap, our absence is noted too. Someone got organised to get a card, to get signatures, to get them long before the final posting date. Thank you.
Assembling the key dishes for Christmas, which again, for me are signature dishes, with deeper links. Trifle for my South Wales childhood, to my Mum's recipe in a glass bowl from her Mum. Cream, jelly, custard, tinned fruit on sponge fingers. I get it's not chic. But how could it be any other? Braised red cabbage, apples, onion, with cloves. Mince pies with Nigella's stars on top. Always look considerably more battered than hers in the photos in the book, but oh well, stands in for a certain happy falling-short in the Domestic Goddess realm. Iced biscuits - the same recipe as for each birthday - but different cutters at Christmas. This time we've got stars, bells and Christmas trees.
I love fresh encounters with old friends. Catching up, renewing friendships. But also with familiar words of old carols, exerpts from the St James Bible, the same language as when I was in infant school. And fresh encounters with old realities. The visiting nativity scene from our toddler group, which would travel from volunteer house to house in the toddler group, one night each, brought by the previous night's hosts, who came in for a mincepie and a playdate. New friendships, meaningful symbols of inclusion and the meaning of Christmas for kids.
'It's beginning to look alot like Christmas' goes the song. We've just returned from the coast, a long, long drive away from Nairobi, and so the song has been sung more than once, more than ten times, by the over-excited hoardes on the back seat. But it isn't looking much at all like Christmas, not as I know it, even though this is our third Christmas here. Blue skys, hot temperatures, mosquito bites. I need cold mornings, hope of snow, ice on puddles, for things to feel 'right'.
