I haven't been a fan of Christmas, I admit. It started years ago, longer ago than I can even put my finger on, but I know that it was borne of a mixture of exasperation with the pressures, financial and otherwise, of the stress of trying to get everything done, of trying to please too many people, of the consumerism and the waste and the voracity of our appetite for things in this part of the world. I would buy a few token gifts here and there, and all we would do to celebrate for many years was make a very good special meal on Christmas day, but otherwise, it was pretty much a day like any other.
Then, there came Nahanni.
Suddenly I had one foot back on the Christmas train from which I had leapt so many years ago. I was up at Parkgate and bought a little tree which I dragged home through the forest, trying earnestly not to poke Nahanni's eye out from her perch in the sling. I dug through the wreckage of the urban storage locker and pulled out a dusty box which contained one set of red chili lights, one box of bulbs, the 2 ornaments my mom had sent and a Christmas gift I had bought a friend who has been AWOL so much of the past five odd years that I can't remember what year I bought it in. There I was, doing Christmas.
I wasn't even sure how I felt about it - I continue to be unsure how I feel about it. I can admit that I enjoyed it more than any other in recent memory and I have a whole new understanding and appreciation for the Christmases my mother knocked herself out to give us as children. I sheepishly admit that I couldn't wait for Nahanni to rip open the paper on the few little gifts I bought her. I was resisting the urge to load the tree with presents in an effort to provide her with the one that would light up her eyes. I was resistant to the fact that every toy nowadays seems to be some weak little hunk of plastic made in China, sprayed with god knows what toxic brew of chemicals {the one toy I did buy her is already broken...). I went simple...but I was still excited. I resisted too the urge to dress her in little reindeer outfits, girly Christmas frocks - I found myself in the aisle one day a while back holding a set of antlers and a little Santa outfit and I felt like I'd been mentally kidnapped -"You don't even like Christmas!', I admonished myself. Instead I plucked a leftover Halloween costume (a holiday I do love) off the rack, a red Little Devil costume and decided that was more fitting for our holiday.
I will admit, I loved watching her open her little gifts, her clumsy fascination with the bow and paper (I know, I usually wrap in newspaper but I also discovered a long forgotten roll of wrapping paper in the back of the closet). It was a happy day - and yet there was a sense [as there so often is with me] of melancholy that accompanied it. Ez had the idea that we should begin our own holiday tradition which will evolve over time to include meals and traditions from around the world, community service etc., but he thought the first thing we should do was make stockings to use every Christmas. He has a long cherished memory of his old stocking, a giant sasquatch-like foot with big toes in which one year, when putting his stocking up he pulled out a dinky car that he'd missed the year before and has never stopped thinking of the absolute glee with which he discovered it. He went out and chose fabric for each of us, Nahanni's being a soft and fuzzy leopard print with pink flowers and stars. I sewed it up after breakfast and glued onto the cuff her little rock from the Nahanni River that Royce and Trish sent - a wonderful symbol of her first Christmas, of our first Christmas as a family. And that was when it really hit me. This stocking that I hold in my hand, it is the one that will see her through all the Christmases of her life, of our life with her. And suddenly I was trying to understand what that kind of span of time really is - it was shocking and depressing and exhilarating and daunting all at one, a flurry of flavours of emotion. Sometimes it can be hard to understand that Nahanni won't always be this little baby, that she will grow and become a little girl and then a teenager and then a woman - and yet always, I will remember the weight of her in my arms, her little hands thumping the hollow of my neck as she waits impatiently for the milk to let down, of her pirhana smile, little shards of teeth peeking out, reminding me that she is growing every day. She is at the point now where she doesn't seem to want to be rocked asleep at night anymore, something which gave her dad great joy. Now she likes to have her milk and then she pops her thumb into her mouth and wriggles to be put down to sleep on her own. You wait and wait for them to gain independence and then when they do you mourn the loss. Someday I will take out a battered box of Christmas whatnot and from it I will pull this crazy stocking and hand it to my grown daughter to take with her to her own home and I will wonder where all the time went from here to there. It makes me immeasurably sad to think of it, and yet also, I am filled with pride and hope at the thought of what an amazing tale that stocking will tell of all the years from now till then. Some will be bountiful, many will be lean, and there is no telling what form our family will take. Watching marriages fall around us like cards in the wind we cannot help but feel some of that breeze upon us. We watch as friends and relatives stumble their way through arrangements, custody, who spends Christmas Eve where and we think how lucky we are that for today, at least, we have had a wonderful holiday, we have started traditions of our own. We are building our family, one day at a time and this day marked it memorably.
I have a little leather-bound photo book which has lain empty for years but I have kept for some reason or other. Today I will slip a picture of her golden bowed head into the slot on the cover, slide a few little memories of this season into the vellum slots and I will tuck it away into that stocking. Every year I will add to it so that someday she can look back and, I hope, remember Christmas as a time when we celebrated how much we loved her, how much fun we had, the adventures we led. I hope she will have little pictures in her mind of these times, and remember them fondly so that no matter what form Christmas, with all its garish possibilities might take in the future, she will think fondly of its smells, its warmth and its wonder.
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