A Different Kind of Christmas

 

In our garden, there is a 15 foot hedge. An evergreen laurel, to be precise. 

Every couple of years, I pay 'a man' on a ladder to trim it. I don't trust myself with a chainsaw. Who does? Yesterday, on the darkest/shortest day of the year, I began to attack it with a £3 saw from Lidl. (Try cleaning the Titanic with a toothbrush). 

There is something addictive about hacking through a forest (I can see how Sleeping Beauty got her prince). I was getting all my 2020 anger out. Take that, you stupid thicket! You dumb plant! Rampant growth, Out of Control.., you Pandemic Metaphor, you! 

The saw made pulsing noises, like electricity down a train track. It was rhythmic and soothing, in the still winter air. The sawdust fell, pale and petite as snow in a snow globe.

I have missed you, readers.

I have wanted to 'talk' to you more frequently, but poor Tess has been off school again, since early December, and that means I am immersed in stay-at-home Mummery. Her chronic cough just powers on (like the hedge) and she needs soothed to sleep after 11pm. 

We are waiting for more tests, more advice in 2021, though doctors are kinda busy right now. She's cheerful enough, between coughs. 

Doctor Sita, checking Lung Function. 

If 2020, has taught me anything, it is this: my kids need me and I should drop the vague 'guilt' or 'not enough-ness' that comes with being a Stay at Home Mum. I have carried that  feeling for a decade, like a wee battered suitcase.

I'm generally in a minority. Most of my pals have jobs and children. 

I feel like my writing is not a 'job'. It's something I attempt to do, when the kids are at school and coasting.

But this has been a year like no other. And it continues to be. Often, I think this is just the beginning of massive planetary turbulence and climate emergency - something I have to try to hide from the kids.  

I've enjoyed writing a few memoir type posts - escapist nostalgia - and I hope to get back to that, maybe at a time when the kids aren't constantly asking, 

Are you excited for Christmas, Mum?

On a scale of 1 to 10? Are you 10 YET?!

 

The jury aren't convinced. I'm guilty as charged, for having an inner Greta Thunberg.  But I am proud of my hedge trimming, instead of hedge funding. 

Have yourself a different kinda Christmas. Put that chainsaw down.  Love the ones you're with.