Wondering Through My Own Christmas Grotto

Without stories or some kind of filtering system, our heads would be like the inside of my wife’s handbag … a mind-boggling clutter of supermarket receipts, prescriptions, jotted down phone numbers and mysterious post-it notes … which she spends frantic minutes rifling through to find the parking ticket she so carefully put away …

So we’re filtering and editing and processing stuff all day long … even when we’re asleep … and even these few hundred words would run into millions if I tried to capture the reams and reams of randomness flashing up and down my brain at any given minute …

And it’s all so brilliant and fascinating …

I often don’t even know what I’m thinking really, or what has really caught my attention, until I sit down and tap out a few of these thoughts, and I could equally select and riff on a thousand others  …

Don’t you just love those happy, fluffy thoughts, though, that float in to rest so reassuringly around your shoulders sometimes?

Like a soft hug from behind from your beloved … 

I just love early mornings in the lead in to Christmas …

Lighting up our nodding reindeer in the hall, and flicking on all those illuminated Christmas scenes and hanging stars in our sitting room, the mini-lanterns over the mantelpiece … and the twinkling Christmas tree itself … it’s like being in a sacred Christmas grotto, or a little sanctuary of loveliness as random memories flash up and down my inner world …

Thoughts of my own childhood Christmases … mornings opening presents down the years in this very room … little blond-haired O beaming wordlessly in his green Manchester United goalie’s jersey … streely-haired K in pink pyjamas, fingering a jewellery making kit … while A smiles benignly on us all, as Bella barks to remind us she hasn’t been fed  …

Just this morning, I was about to take the dogs out and rather than go back upstairs for my shoes I put on my son’s trainers.

I literally stood in O’s shoes for a few minutes … the very fact that my size 11 spogs can fit in them … connecting momentarily with this mysterious 16 year old who shares so little, but seems to function so well in school and beyond …

At loggerheads these days, but I watch in admiration as he stoically soldiers on with a football team that is doing pretty badly … off to the gym regularly, and disciplined in everything he does … impressive …

Not very tolerant of those who disagree with him …

A told me the other day some of his pals know that I blog, and have read a few pieces, and have taken to calling our boy O …

It’s jarring to think of the random way people you expect to read your blog don’t, and then you find out how people you wouldn’t expect to pop into my musings …

It means I have to be careful about certain things I write, not that I would reveal much about others close to me anyway …

I do regret writing some negative things about K when she was at the height of her early teenage … what can I say … doings, and having to draw a veil over my less than positive thoughts and general failings to cope well with her …

But by not talking about her at all, I have also missed out on putting down the much more positive feelings I have as I watch her emerge from the chrysalis of her confusion and random teenage torments …

She is quite something with her astonishing taste in music, movies and TV dramas… even as we try to get her to focus on the necessary evil of school and her upcoming Leaving Certificate exams …

She is a creative force with an exquisite way with words and colour and mood and a lovely sly smile when she makes a joke wrapped up in a barb and tosses it in my oversensitive direction …

As someone said about Bono once, she is a great bunch of people, and you never know what way she will come in the door …

A bit random, but none the less fascinating for that, and more and more loveable …

Our lovely dogs, as real and personable as any person …

And the wonderful A, so positive and emotionally honest and available … loves her Joanna Hynes and others clothes, and her jewellery and her cool streaked hair …

So loving and giving and even more gorgeous than ever … 

Wouldn’t trade her for gold … 

Sure I could wander on randomly but 800 words, my computer has just indicated, so it’s time to finish.

For now …