December 21, 2008

• Feels like Christmas?

  It is Winter's Solstice today. It is also my sister's (and my very first college roommate's) birthday. It is a very cold day, but it was beautiful and quiet and fairly uneventful.

  I looked up and realized that I have been thinking and talking (mostly to myself) but not writing, definitely not here. Which is a shame because my life has finally reached a certain amount of calm. My semester is over (I have no more coursework until next fall if/when I go back for my PhD). I only have work at the library (and a new tutoring position working with ESL students come January) on my plate. And reading and reading from the list of 61 books/plays/poems for my comprehensive exam on January 17th, the one that determines whether or not I get my Masters. Fairly important. But things are calm, minus the sometimes chaotic play by play in my brain. I'm thinking about the life ahead of me. About how different this year ended up...so different than where it started, and about how that's precisely how years are supposed to operate.

  And I'm thinking of Christmas in four days, and looking forward to it, wishing it would snow here in the Delaware Valley. I'm thinking of Christmases past, and Christmases to come, and I wonder about being visited by the same ghosts that visited Scrooge.

  My ghost of Christmas past takes me back to the early '90s, to Tobago and my grandmother's house. I am young, at that age where time blends and the only reason I know how old I am is because someone has told me and I memorize it, like my name. My grandmother's house is large, and not just because I am small. There are four bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen  and an open air veranda (or gallery as we called it) upstairs. The downstairs there are even more rooms and kitchens, converted into little apartments that my grandmother rents out. From the gallery upstairs I can see the street, the neighbor (my great-aunt)'s house, and I can see the sky full of slow moving kites made by little brown boys from kite-paper and Elmer's glue and ribbons. I watched my brother make one one day, watched later as he flew it from a roll of twine. I am young, and to me kites mean Christmas. There is a buzz in the air. I am young, but I can feel it. I can almost hear it, an imperceptible humming, even when the air is still. The winds are cool for the Caribbean, maybe mid 60's. It is slightly chilly to me, but it carries with it Christmas. Inside there is baking; the flour is on the counters and the metal pots are full of fresh boiling guava and mango for tart fillings. The grated coconut sits in a large plastic pink bowl, and over the bowl sits my grandmother humming. She is humming and grating and the "zip zip zip" of the coconut on the grater and the "mmhhmm" of her humming is all the music I hear all day, and the smell of the rolly pollies baking is all the perfume I smell all day. It is the day before Christmas.

  On Christmas day the buzz is louder. There is talking, yes, and cooking too, but the buzz does not come from them. It exists on its own, electric and stirring. In the kitchen and dining room my aunts and uncle and siblings and cousins are cooking, eating, shuffling from space to space. It is a comfortable din, a filling of the place with unfamiliar but welcome noise. Soon they would all go back to their own houses, and only my siblings and I and my humming grandmother would remain. Soon even the buzz would go. But for now I basked in this Christmas.  I peek through a window from the bedroom, covered now in heavy red curtains, the Christmas curtains my grandmother and my aunts put up not too long ago. I peek at the sky, and at the kites, and in the distance I hear "Do you hear what I hear?" leaking from someone's radio into the streets, mingling with the buzz and sending the kites to dancing. I could hear, and feel and see Christmas.

  In the wake of that Christmas, I beg you to enjoy a view of my humble abode, far away from the Caribbean.

  
  The lights out on my very own veranda (kind of...)

  
  Knock if you'd like to enter...

  
  Well come on in!

  
  I hope you like my tree. It's been an apartment tradition of mine ever
  since I moved into my own place.

  
  I found this guy and gave him the position every ornament wants.

  
  But the others are pretty pleased too...

  
  Won't you stay for dinner?

  
  I'll see you out. Please, come again!

  Happy Holidays to you all!

  Much love and Blessings
   ~Tricia~

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  • 10:26 pm
  • 8 Comments