Christmas in Wellington

None of my pictures came out and it rained for most of today, but Christmas went okay this year.

I had to work Christmas Eve and had a really rough day, so by the time Alice came over to make tiramisu I was pretty tired and grumpy and not really feeling the spirit, to say the least. It’s gone from being a difficult weekend to a difficult week, but I’m happy to report that an hour or five of talking and eating and doing facemasks and exchanging gifts and having an Outrageous Fortune marathon did wonders for our moods. I tried not to think too much about my mom in Miami and my sister in New York or about last Christmas, which was one of the best I’ve ever had ever, and was very glad to have my good friend with me when I was feeling a little off.

Christmas morning I even woke up with a little sense of seasonal anticipation, with lots of texts from all over the world (well, from England and Australia, mostly) and a good chat with my mom, who was spending her day in her garden and having a warmer Christmas Eve in winter Miami than we were in summer Wellington. Alice had agreed to host an orphan’s dinner and we were full of plans and menus and contingencies for the day, and we saddled up (“Got the torrone? Got the chocolate powder? Got the mostaccioli? Got the sappy DVDs? Got the iPod cable?”) and got the free bus to Mt. Vic, tiramisu in hand, feeling pretty proud of ourselves.

Alice has only been in her house for about a week so we had to spend some time figuring out where all the pots and pans were, and there was a bit of a tense moment having to do with a lack of tinfoil in the house and a situation with the stereo system, but a few emergency texts my brilliant idea to hook the iPod up to the TV, we were listening to music and cooking away happily. Well, mostly she was doing the real cooking, like touching the raw chicken and peeling four hundred pounds of potatoes with her bare hands for colcannon. I mostly chopped vegetables and said things like “Hmm, this could use more butter,” and was in charge of the cheese plate. All the other people showed up and for a while it was all introductions and cheek kisses and offers of help with food (“NO WE’RE FINE HERE YOU JUST SIT DOWN AND HAVE A DRINK,” said the two control freaks in the kitchen) and dinner–which ended up really yummy, thanks for asking–was eaten with many compliments, half sitting on the living room floor and half sitting outside on the patio in the sun. Most of the people there were strangers to me but everyone was very fun and friendly and nice. There’s been a lot of drama lately–fortunately none of it has anything directly to do with me–and so it was a relief to take a bit of a break from all that and talk about celebrities and hair straighteners and about what we do for Christmas back home.

Struggling against post-dinner torpor, a few of us went and got lost on Mt. Vic for a while and then by the time we got back everyone else had decided to try to do the Antipodean thing of going to the beach on Christmas Day, before we’d even popped the Christmas crackers. Ken and Luis stayed with me and Alice but everyone else, all the people I didn’t know very well, said thank you and goodbye and left all in a flurry, leaving the four of us sort of standing around blinking and wondering what, exactly, had happened. “We have,” I said, looking into the fridge, “an entire tiramisu here.” “We should get started on that,” said Luis, cracking his knuckles and getting ready to fight the good fight ahead.

The four of us sat around and watched dumb movies for a while, eating platesful and platesful of desserts (“We didn’t even open the mince pies!” wailed Alice at one point during Love Actually), and then Luis and I had a long talk about politics and then Ken and I had a long talk about boys and I decided I wasn’t going to bother getting the bus home to Berhampore and Alice decided she was going to go to bed and there were hugs and kisses all around and I finally fell asleep, still feeling a little…strange.

It’s not that I am a huge Christmas fan, or that I was missing family traditions or anything. Those of you who have either had Christmas in my presence back when we all lived on the island together or who have been reading long enough know that I usually spend it very quietly and without much fanfare, so to speak. I haven’t been to a big Italian dinner, the kind where your cousin says “You’re eight years old, have a drink!,” for probably twenty years. Mom doesn’t get a tree anymore (although she does still put up ornaments, she just hangs them around the house, like off lampshades and things), I can’t stand carols, and I am getting less and less interested in receiving gifts as I get older. I felt weird about my mom’s being alone for Christmas (“Honey,” she assured me this morning when I called her, “I ate potatoes with a side of potatoes on my balcony in the sun looking over my garden, with my cat, a book, and a glass of wine. I could not have been happier“) and as though I was a bad daughter for being on the other side of the world for two holidays in a row, but that wasn’t quite it. I felt a little odd for having cooked for strangers but not having been able to get to really know them, but since I liked spending time with the people who stuck around, that wasn’t quite it either. I still don’t know what it was, what made the whole thing feel off, strange, weird.

Alice and I had another good talk this morning and decided we made such a good Christmas dinner that we should probably get married or something. It was sunny this morning and we though that we’d maybe do the Antipodean beach thing. “Hey!” I said, downing the tail end of my tea. “We should maybe do the Antipodean beach thing!” thinking it might be nice to go to my house and then walk over to Island Bay, and that was the cue for the rain to start pouring down. We did go to my house but we opted for four or five more OFepisodes (“Hey, wasn’t that prison guard that Loretta just lost her virginity to on Shortland Street?“), mince pies, and multiple more cups of tea under a duvet before Alice had to leave to go on a real live date, for which I helpfully gave her much advice about which base was which (“I’m pretty sure first base is kissing with tongue but I’ve never been to second base so we’ll have to google it”). I drank more tea and sent a few more texts and got ready for work tomorrow. I’m listening to Kirsten Hersch right now and am about to get into bed, and when I end this entry Christmas will be over and it will time to count down the days to New Year’s Eve and the Fat Freddy’s/Shapeshifter/Ladi 6 show.

It went okay. I feel okay. Christmas in Wellington was okay.