I’ve been feeling sad. These memories, like pheasants flying up as I ride past, have upset me. Those weekends and winter holidays in the country were warm and happy, and even though my father was tense, and my mother harried, they were together; we were all together. It was safe. We lived a double life in this standard of plenty, he had his way, she had hers, Sussex and London, they were more than a car ride apart. My father stayed in his cottage when we left on a Sunday nights, he came up vaguely only sometimes to town, a lemon in his pocket, to hunch at the kitchen table. The low-beamed cottage was his home, and those two places were vast in their oceans of difference. The tall, cold house is gone now and since it fell apart I’ve been here, wandering the messiness of endless summers, and bright, cold winters. I see the lights go up on the Christmas tree outside beside the well that the vicar used to bless even though it was only my father’s bath water hidden beneath an ancient head and bucket. I see the sitting room through the window, cosy and warm, the brick fireplace stacked with wood, the heavy black iron fire dogs, the secret bread oven, I see the four armchairs, each a loose cover faded colour, yellow, brown, blue, and orange, and the collapsing green sofa on which there was always a cat. I see the round table by the glass doors that had the little balustrade like a balcony for mice. In the corner was the miniature library with tiny window, above which, in my parents’ bedroom, was the cupboard that led to a secret room into which I’d crawl, pushing coats aside, my Narnia, waiting for Aslan. I see the wooden head of my eldest sister, braced by a pair of golden lions on the windowsill of the upstairs corridor, downstairs are the other clay ones of us. There we all are, gathered on Christmas Eve writing letters to Santa Clause, a fire built up, our father handing out thin paper and pens. On the settle, its leather torn by scratching cats, I sit knees up, my letter on a book, and write Dear Santa and when I’m done my father lightly scrunches it up and holds it on the toasting fork above the flames for the draft to whisk it up the chimney; even if it falls, he’ll say it still works. Out come the stockings when we’ve gone to bed, I imagine my parents surrounded together with boxes of gathered little things, the chocolate coins and walnuts, the tangerines and sugar mice and packs of mini cards, while in my bed I try to stay awake but sleep, listening to the stream falling endlessly through rock. Once I woke as he crept in with my stocking loaded and wrapped in tinsel, I saw my Father Christmas lay it on the end of my bed. But was the spell broken? No. The spell of that place remains even now I am grown, have a home and children of my own. Some places are always Narnia. I wanted to stay there forever, for the end of winter holidays or Sunday nights to never come. But this was Christmas Eve, and in my bed, eyes closed pretending, I heard my father creep out of the door, felt the reassuring weight of Christmas stocking with my toes. Tomorrow we’ll pile into their bed, all of us, a mass of tinsel and opening small gifts, my father trying not to spill his tea, my mother crowded by the bodies of us.
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So good. I once saw Santa with my own two eyes, his great big butt up in the air as he bent over to put presents under the Xmas tree. In the morning, I realized Santa's butt was actually the wheel of my new tricycle, I was that small, it looked enormous. 🎅🏼
I’m thinking now about the paradox of those magical places. The feeling of safety in my own memories like this was false. Yet that feeling was real for the moment. It’s like a fire that creates its own weather, just on the smaller scale of the child’s heart.