Christmas

This was a quiet Christmas.

Last Christmas, I remember spending a lot of it in tears. Perhaps it was some sort of subconscious portentous mourning. More likely it was because Christmas is often such an intense time of people being together, trying to fold pre-conceived visions of happiness into quotidian existence rather than accepting the beauty in some of the most mundane things (like boiled broccoli), that it can all get a bit much. I remember particularly getting almost inconsolably anxious and tearful over a change of plans over Christmas Eve lunch, the sudden shift of yes-shepherds-pie to no-shepherd's-pie to some-people-will-have-shepherd's-pie-and-some-people-will-buy-something-from-somewhere-else causing my careful balance of 'ok this is what is going to happen' to crack and slice open the tears of anxious planning that had been damming themselves within me for a while. I remember refusing to eat with the family, desperately scrubbing the kitchen counters with a sponge as if making everything clean would help, and then collecting myself, returning to the imperfect fold of family (although I'm not sure if I did this at lunch or only at dinner), retreating to the double bedroom and calling Emily.

This year I had a shepherd's pie again, this time a better recipe and far more peaceful circumstances. I made it on Christmas Eve, talking to myself as if I were a cook on a television show 'right so now we're going to take our sweet potato and mash it - leave the skin on that's the most nutritious part'. Between the shepherd's pie being prepared and the shepherd's pie being baked I went on a windy walk under brumous clouds through muddy fields I had not walked before. Once I had got to a place where the noise of cars had faded, and my own thoughts took precedence finally - not my mediated thoughts of planning and organising and worrying but my feeling thoughts of responding and worshipping and experiencing - what happened was a beautiful, unstoppable outpouring of gratitude.

I spoke aloud to the God I know hears me anywhere, giving thanks for the precious space and time I was in which felt so healing, giving thanks for the joy he had filled me in this year and this term especially. I couldn't stop praising him for who he was, what he had done and how excited I am for what he is and will be doing. I thanked him for the people in my life, for the relationships he's sustained, strengthened, deepened, begun and ended. I thanked him for his creation, for the people fighting to protect it and steward it as commanded, for the beauty of hidden places. My words turned into song, going through classics like Dad's version of 'Amazing Grace', the 'Shepherd' song Luk Ching sent me, 'Grace upon Grace' which Hannah and I sung for offertory in summer.

On Christmas Day I woke up, and put on carols just as Dad and Mum always do at home. (I may have replayed Lo he comes with clouds descending and Of the Father's Love Begotten an obscene number of times but there was no one to annoy but myself) and then opened the lovely presents given and sent from people, including the much anticipated mysterious anonymous amazon package received a couple of days ago and left with my previously anonymous neighbour Stuart and the yellow envelope from Jacob. The former was from Alex, and was 'On the Verge of Insanity: Van Gogh and his Illness' which I was deeply pleased with, and the latter was a book Jacob had made (Made! Hand stitched! How does he do these things?) which he had titled (in his beautiful callography) 'A Poetry Anthology - Edited by Miriam Yeo (with contributions from Jacob Henstridge)'. The first page was Wild Geese, which I think of as my life poem and which I remember showing him on a bus in Rome (taking out from my purse the poem written on the back of a cut out tea box, the way I still carry it around with me). There was As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Hopkins which I read when Jacob brought it to the Englings gathering at the Laurence's. There was the You Come Too poem by Frost, those words which we said so much over Summer and which have manifested in an ever growing list of things we want to experience together. There was extracts from The Language of Love and Tea with Roasted Almonds by Yehuda Amichai which I nervously read out to him when we sat together on my bed - I've always loved the ninth stanza, which he wrote out in full, but my heart caught because he included a line from the first stanza which I never saw in its nakedness without the other words of the stanza 'That is to say: the two of us, that is to say: we.' Have I mentioned yet that I love this man?

In the afternoon I had time to do yoga and go for a cycle ride to Milton Country Park and decide to return there without my bicycle (or with a lock so I could relinquish my bike) and walk around its wandering ways. It was exciting to think I was following paths when I had no knowledge of their destinations. In the evening I finished 'Shame' by Salman Rushdie, which ended with terrifying anticipation, to complete a book of magic, gruesome twists, hilarious descriptions and cartoonish yet poignant characters. I had that feeling of close-to-physical exhaustion one gets from the mental and emotional intensity of a good novel, and felt rinsed with terror and pleasure.