Quiet peaceful time

I, too, look forward to a quiet time on Christmas Eve.  Maybe a little time to reflect on the passing years, and to remember family Christmases at home.  Maybe one with 24 people sitting around the table at Auntie Lorraine's?  that table started in the kitchen and ran right through the living room.  Sometimes there was even a "children's table' in the front foyer.  I have a very strong memory of walking home alone after dinner, one year.  it was bitterly cold out, and not much snow on  the ground.  I had to walk carefully along a slippery sidewalk, in new shoes-despite the cold.  I don't remember any of those big family dinners at our house, but I do remember Christmas at Uncle Burt's house.  Can't remember if we ate there, but I know we spent the evening there.

When my children were small, we would try to make it home at Christmas, from where ever we were living, at the time.  And then there was Christmas 1980, at Beth's house in Victoria, and that terrible drive through the Fraser Canyon trying to make the last ferry--which we did by the skin of our teeth.  That was a crazy Christmas, all of us together in that house with cats and baby Will.  I don't think I'll ever for get that one.  It was a little more special in that Dad and Phyllis were in Victoria as well, and he was happy.

When David's father lived with us, I tried to make a ritual of serving a Stollen on Christmas Eve.  They sold them at work--as part of a Christmas Fundraiser I think.  I don't think they were made there, but they could have been.  I've certainly never found them since.  This year, I saw Stollen in local stores, but at quite a price, and then we found them at Natural Bakery, when we were there last week, for less than half, I bought two.  Only when we got home did I read the small print and discover that they were a "product of Germany".  No way of finding out how old they really were, but I'm sure there were lots of preservatives in them.  Only one had Marzipan in it, and we tried that one today.  It was quite nice.  Purely a raisin bread, rather than the fruit bread we might find here, but quite tasty. Made me think of the loaf of bread that David's sister found in her motor home one spring.  It had been there all winter, but was as fresh and tasty as when she bought it.

I'm reading a book that contains an element of wonder and spirituality that is just what I appear to need, right now.  It's "Two if my Sea", by Jacquelyn Mitchard, an American with an impressive resume.  This is a pleasantly crazy book that starts with a horrendous natural disaster, and jumps to training Olympic-quality equestrians, and at the point I'm at, introducing menacing "bad guys", with the hint of Angels in the back ground.  Sounds insane, and I can't put it down.  Since it's the last library book I have, and they don't re-open until Friday, once it's finished, I'll be forced to start the re-read of the Monkeewrench books, that I've been planning for a couple of months.  Unfortunately, since half of the writing duo recently died, I notice the books are a lot less about Monkeewrench and far more about the two detectives and the maverick FBI agent.  Still a good read, but not nearly as "quirky" as they started out to be.

I hope everybody's Christmas is what they hope it will be.  Relax, eat, drink and have dessert.  That's what our family has always been about.