There’s a mess on my dining room table. Three paper cups half full of water. A can of Kole Beer with a pink and green napkin shoved into the hole on top. A knife. Scattered crumbs, and a random candy cane. There’s even a train. Tracks and all. True story.
Today was our family Christmas party. It started earlier than planned and ended that way, too. My sister drove for four hours to get here, and my niece and mother for two.
This year, Hubby and I were the chosen ones, the household with enough space and good enough air conditioning to host everyone on a stinking hot day.
Everyone divvied up the supplies and brought the agreed-upon items. There was more food than bench space. People squeezed around each other trying to put presents under the tree while others helped set up or got in the way of those doing so. It was mayhem. And it was magnificent.
The circular train track I’d set up on the table restricted everyone’s eating space, but it was fun watching the locomotive chug and toot its way past each person while they either talked or read out groanworthy Dad jokes from their Christmas crackers. Now and then I heard Grandma giggling over jokes we weren’t sure she’d heard, let alone understood. I asked her if she needed less noise, and she insisted “No!” She loved seeing us all hanging out together even if she couldn’t follow every conversation.
Eventually, even the loudest of us gave up on yelling over the noise and asked for the train to be turned off for a bit. Then we moved on to dessert. Pavlova. With cream for some, and without for others due to the family curse of age-related lactose intolerance.
A plate of fruit was passed around for everyone to decorate their dessert to their preference. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and yellow Kiwi. Yellow? Whose idea was that? It tasted good, but the pav looked wrong without something green on top, jostling for space amongst the rest of the fruit. Nobody thought to chop up a banana, and the White Christmas my husband had perfected after years of making as Teacher End Of Year gifts sat forgotten in the fridge, discovered only after everyone had left.
Once we were too full to eat, we swapped presents. Some opened theirs so the givers could see their expressions. Others declined, knowing they wouldn’t have anything to open on Christmas Day if they did so now. Photos were taken, and gift wrapping was balled up and thrown at a randomly selected box set an equally random distance away from the unwrappers in a tradition we started a few years ago to keep the floor clean and safe while also having fun.
Then they all left in a flurry. First, the niece and her Grandma, who she is keeping for a few days to give her a break from the impending heatwave. Next, my sister and BIL settled the dog they take everywhere onto the back seat of their car and climbed back into the front ones for the four-hour drive home. Then my son, who had been watching his phone which is linked to his doorbell camera, announced a courier had just left a parcel at his house and he’d better go grab it before someone else did. He gave me a funny look as he spoke so I assumed it had my present in it, and he didn’t want that nicked from his front doormat.
That left me, my husband, and the son who is in no hurry to go anywhere, cleaning up the leftovers and working out where to store the big bag of lobster shells and prawn tails peeled from the seafood that everyone says they want but nobody eats. I’m a country girl – give me a good old estuary-caught crab any day.
A few years ago, I’d have hated being in this position. I would have only seen the mess, given I was the one the clean-up duties would fall upon. But my sons are older and more capable. One has left home. Now, I value their presence in all its randomness, and I find it hard to clean up the inevitable mess left behind. My son sat here. My niece and I discussed nails there. Grandma chose this chair, right in everyone’s way, meaning we all had to go around. Brilliant.
We pack away the excesses of food that will be our meals for the next few days and wipe down the benches. I run the brand-new upright vacuum cleaner that sucks way better than its more expensive and cumbersome predecessor over the tiles. But as I turn to leave the kitchen, I notice something out of place.
A green piece of coloured popcorn, that treat of my youth and now the sole survivor of the food that spilled onto the floor, has been shoved up under the cupboard recess. Vacuum cleaner still in hand, I leave it.
Kitchen tidied, we head off to work through our food comas in the way that best suits us. One is watching YouTube in the study. The other’s playing war games in his room.
And me? I’m writing before the inspiration fades. I want the memory of frenetic family feasts to last as long as it can. And that’s why I’m not sweeping up the popcorn that got kicked under the cupboard recess.
Nobody else is likely to notice it. Even if they do, I’m quite sure they won’t bother to pick it up. It’s my little green secret. My reminder. Of family. Of fun. Of a loud, messy, and imperfect but love-filled Christmas.
A Glorious Mess 