Merry Christmas loves

Merry Christmas to all my beloveds in the blog kingdom. Thank you for all your support and friendship in the year that was. Over here we are having what I have finally accepted is our usual Christmas, low key and slow, the gifts opened, everyone drowsing through the morning, my son playing video games, my daughter gone back to sleep in her Santa hat, my husband reading instruction booklets—I always try for at least one gift that has instruction booklets. He dives right into them. I have just finished my morning phone calls. I have spoken to my mother, all the aunts, and a few cousins, and have received salutations as well.

My mother sounded clearer the longer we spoke, and by the time I put her on the phone with her grandchildren she was all here. But she is confused these days, my brother says, or at least that is the word we apply to it, because we cannot see what she sees. The other day when my Aunt Grace was visiting her, she asked if that was their brother Terrence sitting on the couch beside Grace. Aunt Grace said, "Terrence died. He isn't here," to which my mother replied archly, "How is it that I am blind in one eye and I can see him and you can't?" She lives almost continuously in this alternate reality, seeing and imagining all manner of things. Yesterday she told my brother that she had "sent in the application" and needed to "discuss a few things" with him. She also told my Aunt Grace that she wanted to have a luncheon or a tea party for her 100th birthday in January. She will be 93 in January, but for some weeks now she cannot be convinced of this. She is quite sure that it is her 100th birthday coming up and she means to celebrate it. She told me on the phone to be sure to arrange cake and ice cream for the day, and apparently she has told my brother and his wife the same thing. My husband and I are planning to fly down for a quick visit to celebrate with her because if she thinks she's turning 100 how to explain that her daughter is not there for that?

I did manage this morning to get a photo of my son in the red onesie that his sister gave him for Christmas. It's a perfect sibling gift, I think, and it brings out the goofball in him. The men will head to the supermarket soon for the makings of Christmas dinner while my daughter and I clean up the house for round two. My cousin is coming to have dinner with us. This is her first Christmas without her husband Gary, who died in October. It is our first Christmas without my husband's dad, too, and our first without Aunt Winnie. The dominoes fall. We keep on playing. Two of my son's friends will also be here with us tonight. We are a small outpost in the city. Aunt Winnie and Uncle Charlie are no longer across the way, and most cousins who once lived here or went to school here are now relocated to other cities. Larger groupings of family are gathering in Maryland and in Florida, as well as in Jamaica, but here, we will make Christmas with friends who are like family, and I feel no pressure this year. I feel okay.