Day after Christmas

This year was a bit confusing for me. Initially I thought I had no Christmas spirit. I swore not to put up a single decoration until after Dec. 15 but then one day I went to a mall and saw some silver unbreakable balls whose design I liked. They were marked down so I decided to buy them.

 After a few days I brought down my boxes of Christmas décor, found I didn’t have too many but had a bit of copper and gold. Suddenly I took a look at a barren silver wire tree that I use to display the jewelry I make and sell at bazaars (didn’t join a bazaar this year ) and saw that actually I could hang silver balls and copper and gold trim from it. Voila, in a couple of hours I had a modern Christmas tree, not too small but not big enough for little children to get excited over.  But hey, there are no more little children coming for Christmas. My youngest grandson is 14, a young man now. I am an aging lady with grown-up grandchildren and adult children coming for lunch on Christmas Day.

 Lately I haven’t been feeling very well. I don’t know if it’s because I read about a friend’s cancer experience and imagined the disease as my own or was I genuinely feeling quite sick? I’d wake up in the morning too lazy to write, just inclined to stay in my sleep wear, sit at the big desk in my work room and make earrings, ignoring the little pains I felt. I knew I had lost energy for anything but then one day I decided to bake Irish soda bread. What is Irish soda bread?

 Once upon a time we lived in Burlingame, a suburb of San Francisco and in our neighborhood was the Copenhagen Bakery. My mother would visit that bakery regularly and she would come home with Irish soda bread. It’s a bread without yeast, just baking powder and baking soda, and lots and lots of raisins, the dark brown ones and sultanas, the light gold ones. By next year I will have left Burlingame 28 years ago though it feels more like five years ago. Once in a while I miss Irish Soda Bread, can’t find it in any bakery around, so I decided to bake it. I sort of succeeded except it needs more work. I shouldn’t use whole wheat flour, which has a flavor of its own and maybe I should skip the caraway seeds. I will try again after the holidays.

 Anyway, feeling as unenergetic as I did, I succeeded in mixing and kneading and baking Irish soda bread. Nevertheless I couldn’t get my energy up to cook for Christmas. It was a stormy dark gray Saturday. I just sat in front of the TV set knitting and feeling cold. I felt so cold for three whole days. I just couldn’t imagine what I would cook. So I asked my children if they could host Christmas lunch but neither one could. Oh, okay, let it be me, I said.

 Then I decided to use paper plates and cups because I have no maid and I hate doing the dishes. Also I ordered sinigang na lechon from one of my favorite restaurants in the mall closest to me. By the time you read this it will be finished, eaten by my two male grandchildren aged 30 and 21, who are visiting from San Francisco.  My son will have brought rellenong manok and our lunch will be over.

 What do we have Christmas lunch for anyway? Is it to eat turkey or rellenong manok, ham, fruit salad, chestnuts and whatever traditional fare we offer in our family or is it a reason to take time out of our ordinary lives and get together to celebrate something — the birth of the Christ Child or the birth of the Great Mother.

 Who is the Great Mother? Before Catholicism or maybe Christianity was invented she was the Goddess of the Earth. I found out reading, as I do often, that from Dec. 21 to 22 is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. In the old days, B.C. I guess for Before Christ, people believed it to be the birthday of the Great Mother, the lady they prayed to for everything. That was in the old days when people believed in women before men came over and took away the women’s power and poetry.

 But never mind that today is the day after Christmas. And everyone is tired including the mouse. Let’s all of us take a week to rest before the New Year. Hope the New year will be a good one for all of us.

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