As usual, cup of tea is steaming at the right hand side of my keyboard, my feet are the freezing extremity, burdened by my refusal to leave the bare-footedness behind that I have always preferred and two little voices, high-pitched with youth and gender but heightened by excitable squeals, resonates softly.
I have checked my emails, uploaded cherished photos that have so far captured the early sprites of festive mischief and wandered through the pages of social network.
I get a little message on the right hand side of the screen and without warning that familiar crackle of stinging teardrop swells in the corner of my eyes. It appears that this somebody is dearer to me without either that person or myself realising it.
'Merry Christmas, I can't send a card but didn't want to forget you'.
I know not exactly what it is that chokes me a little and makes me recline, take a sip of tea and smile inside and out. But something nudges at my sentimentality a touch but punches at my guilt with a fire behind it. It seems that I wasn't going to be forgotten about but I know, with a heavy hang of shame, that this person would not have been a part of my thoughts on this day, Christmas Eve or any other day; or not in any grand way in any case.
I'm somewhat saddened and anxious that I can be blazé about a human being who is also able to stir up such an emotion in me with a short and sweet ditty on facebook. It's time, I believe, to stop schmoozing with those immediately around me, quit cotton-wool-wrapping my nearest and dearest and look to what may seem a little further-afield but which is closer than one would imagine, withing grasp; take a stroll through the memory banks, the remnants of days gone by. Do not dwell on the past, they say; but what happens if your past is a collage of heritage, questions, answers and memoirs that were created before you even came to life. Some things are bigger than you, bigger than the present, and within a few fleeting but fervent seconds I have just had my eyes opened to this conclusion.
All at once, I am apt to look beyond the here and now and remember the people and the times and the places that are as much a part of my present as my past. They canot knock on my door for coffee and cake but they can make me well up with a single line of innocent well-wishing. They share the fact that they too are a part of the same decisions and dalliances and dirty laundry and dear, dear domestic rollercoasters as I which, although somewhat sinister by themselves nonetheless combined to make a wonderful legacy and stories that I shall forever remember rolling off the animated tongue of my grandmother.
I love that I have not been forgotten when, for every intent and purpose, you would say I have no place in the thought process or memory of this one person. It takes a little stinging teardrop and a simple sentence sometimes to bring me back to a place of recognition and so I shall not forget you either.
Merry Christmas back :)
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