Tuesday, December 26, 2006

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

<-- A festive blanket of hail covers the ground.

Mum's not talking to Dad, or Aunty R, and barely to my sister Zephyr.

Zephyr's distressed; she doesn't want to spend her annual holidays in Bali with Mum, me and our dope-smoking National party voting brother (What's the word for someone trying to light a candle in a sleet-driven gale? Mum's foolhardy gesture of a present is a family holiday).

Aunty R, the Sunday school teaching evangelical eccentric maiden aunt with the weatherbeaten weatherboard house stuffed to the brim with old newspapers, old toys and old photograph albums, hasn't talked to Lovergirl before today. Her Christmas card, addressed to me (alone), says, 'God put the CHRIST in CHRISTmas'. Lovergirl made a concerted effort and had her charmed by the end of breakfast.

Aunty L drops in with Uncle C in tow. He stands silently where he is parked, swaying ever so gently. She's on her way home from mass and has to leave before he wets his pants. He's gone downhill even more since last year; I didn't think that possible.

Aunty P has a livid black eye from tripping over an electric power cord. The black bruise drips down her face like tears. She sucks on oxygen tanks in between cigarettes as she's dying of lung cancer. I agree, why give up now?

Cousin M isn't talking to Aunty P because Cousin M doesn't like Aunty P's new boyfriend D.

Aunty R gives Mum (and me, and Zephyr) crocheted flannels. Mum doesn't mention them, and they are still folded neatly under the tree when she leaves. I swipe them - you can't have too many crocheted flannels.

Dad's ladyfriend Joan has been boycotting the Myer windows for the last five years because 'they're not allowed to have Christmas themes anymore, because of the Muslims'. I say I saw the Myer windows, an interpretation of a Mem Fox book in which Australian animals put on a nativity. Lots of Virgins and angels and wise men. Joan doesn't believe me. Someone told her, therefore it's true.

Lovergirl has two new books and is suspiciously engrossed. Fourteen year old Darcy is likewise occupied with new playstation games. 'In this one you're an assassin, and have to go around killing people.'

If only.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh my.

Has lovergirl finished the books yet?