Spot the moment of festive cheer

So I'm at Spot, my favourite café in roc, trying to extend the flow of my day in the library. Finally energized by my writing, feeling like something meaningful is actually being made.



I've been quite offhand about the holidays this year. I put some white lights up around the windows in my flat, and sent out a few -- very few -- cards with little penguins on. B and I had a shared moment of sadness about the boxes of decorations in her basement that are the postscripts of the lasagne-and-tree-trimming parties we had for years. Touchstones of a community. But overall, I'm good with F's resolute focus on new year's as the holiday to mark. I like the shift of the year, and it feels good to let go of the accumulation of jagged raggedness that christmas represented for years -- all the shuttling between families, never a chance to be peacefully at home. The pent up angst of the year spurting out in all the close proximities. It feels right to make new rituals, and I'm excited about the trip we're planning on the west coast between xmas and new year's. The right coast.

And yet, here at spot, the Seasonal Music I much despise mercifully muted, an instrumental version of Partridge in a Pear Tree catches at my ankles. So fused to my memories of my dad, fiercely insisting that the extended family pause to sing along. The dramatic -- if tuneless -- intonation on Five Golden Rings. Missing that moment of optimistic intensity. A moment of yearning.

And then back to a warbling, despised Ella version of Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, and it passes. Time stretched, rift opened, sewed firmly shut again.