dashing through the snow, dancing in the aisles!
fighting tears at Mass, snow and festive flu...
Hello dear ones, I hope your festive celebrations, however you orchestrate them, have been the making of beautiful new memories, that all the in between days are peaceful ones, that you’ve had time for being still.
We had more snow! Just when I was trying to be the perfect Christmas kitchen goddess!
I was distracted! Beautifully! But I believe being distracted by huge fluffy flakes of snow on the first day of winter when we see so little to be good reason. And, maybe, just maybe, it is part of being a goddess, one who waves and weaves her magic to produce the perfect Christmas with a beautiful snowy topping because who needs much else when there is silence and rolling blankets of pristine white? Certainly not I.
Except, it wasn’t quite like that! The snow came with fog and then it left again leaving a muddy mix of slushy nastiness behind and in my distracted state, nothing is really achieved except, and at least, a Christmas tree and then a delightful flu germ descended upon us like a mean forsaken Angel returned from sweet heaven knows where for revenge and one by one, like dominoes, we fell.
DECEMBER 15 — David Henry Thoreau once said “An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” I believe he spoke a priceless golden truth every time I am late for classes. I couldn’t take my eyes from the light I explain when I arrive like a live-wire with sparks still exploding from the loose ends. I apologise with a smile and a still electrified shrug my colleagues already know and accept so well. I thank them and send them the photographs. They understand. I am filled with gratitude, for the morning, for the light, for them, for blessed early morning walks.
DECEMBER 16 and 17 — I can hear the night moving away on these mornings, so cold, but like winter should be. The hill takes the shape of both wind and mist, softened contours are cradled in a sort of warm caramel-cream swirl enticing me to rest a while, and how quickly time passes in these colours… I am almost late to classes again so loud is my longing to be wrapped in the same warm-toffee glow it’s hard to pull away…
DECEMBER 18 — the hill is swarming with hunters, it is nearing darkness, they are ready to leave. Their tired dogs lay panting beside the track leading up the hill, men still in flash jackets are reeking of the days endeavours and, mixed within the dogs panting breath and them, something sweeter, something perfumed, cedar wood or bois-de-rose — one of them has expensive taste — wafts in the frigid air. They all look defeated, there is no kill laid beside them. I wish them ‘bonsoir’ as I continue up the hill. On the outcrop at the top I sit a while. There is a stillness to the silver birch trees trailing down the north-west slope telling me they take seriously the resting of winter. Bracken, a month ago coppery, lies flat and browned to the ground between them. I watch the silhouetted trees dissolving into the ink of night, breathe a deep clean breath of hill air just as Venus and the waning crescent moon light up one last tusked-silhouette disappearing over the ridge. I cannot help my smile.
DECEMBER 19 — on the morning of the last day before holidays begin, once again, a silent sigh is visible in four pairs of exhausted eyes. As is the tradition every year, a short mass will be attended by the whole school before La Quine begins after lunch. We walk two by two, hand in hand through the village to the local church — which always reminds me of Ludwig Bemelmans Madeleine — noisily seat all classes with the tinies at the front. I am right at the back. I am always right at the back, it suits me and everyone else to keep all my little darlings who are likely to wriggle or laugh or cry or shout or attempt to escape their way through the service on one fidgety pew.
One five year old in particular — this year — is ten-hands-full of beans, the rest are miraculously captivated though whether by ambiance or cold is uncertain. He is incapable of either quietness or stillness, I walk him around the aisles, I tell him the names of multicoloured stained glass saints peering down at us, he asks a hundred yet more multicoloured questions about each of them. He stands on me while I’m seated, sits on cold flagstones when I stand. When the carols begin he wants to dance on the pews, I dance with him because it is easier than trying to still him. He is ecstatic and wild, I cling to his hands. For the first time — ever — I am hot in a place of worship. I cast beseeching glances at the priest, he catches my eye and winks, ‘strange behaviour’ I think but dance on; me and my little one are bopping our way to Bethlehem on hallowed ground as the saints pray from their windows.
For the final hymn, the priest asks for silence — most comply — looks at me again, then announces in an insistent but gentle voice with laughter playing in his eyes that he wishes everyone to dance like the lady at the back of the church.
Everyone dances and it truly is a beautiful thing. I cry.
DECEMBER 20 — I am awake at a ludicrous hour to ensure all that has to be posted overseas, at least, is wrapped and ready. I arrive, triumphant at ‘La Poste’ a minute before it opens only to find a queue of twenty-two people have the very same ‘je suis vraiment en retard’ panic stricken faces. Many of us are muttering a silent prayer that a postal strike is not imminent, others are voicing their concerns in typically French theatrics. None of which makes the slightest difference given the days’ proximity to Christmas because already nothing will arrive on time. Mercifully there is no strike but the waiting takes over an hour of already precious little time. There is only one very stressed, glistening lady behind the counter. She doesn’t quite burst into tears but I can feel her need…
I finally return to the only very slightly more sane environment of my kitchen flustered and hungry and am bombarded by the now pressing question of ‘qu’est ce qu’on va faire pour le Sapin de Noël maman?’
‘Merde, j’ai meme pas y pensé?’
‘C’est à toi de décider cherie!’
DECEMBER 21 — Rosie decides. A book tree. Of course! We have time for that… we don’t, we absolutely don’t! Constructing a Christmas book tree is dusting and sorting and carting of boxes, it’s precise, it’s exhausting and will take at least four to five hours…
DECEMBER 22 — I am delighting in the silence that wakes me, I know before my eyes are open snow is falling! In the kitchen, with hot tea in my hands I watch the flakes making their swirls of winter loveliness. From the comfort of my kitchen window not a single thought of the havoc this might create to our shopping plans for the day even crosses my mind.
I never worried about driving in snowy conditions until I lived on a hill with steep ravines to one side of the lane. Blue-white knuckles grip the steering wheel — as if that would help — as I drive at snails pace down to the main road, my heart is beating at a rate that would surely set off every flashing beeping alarm were I to be laying in a hospital ward. Until we descend into the valley that clutches Villefranche de Rouergue in its folds I forget to breathe but eventually white blankets turn speckled then grey, I breathe out and my heart calms though my hands remain a ghostly blue.
The shopping centre is an incomprehensible battle ground for the closest spot to the doors — I watch speechless as a young woman, wild with fury, kicks the front wing of a parked car while screaming at the driver, presumably because he nipped in the space while she gazed at her phone — we park at the furthest point possible avoiding an ugliness I will never understand. Shopping for Christmas food is uneventful although my heart rate and BP do something horrible again when I see the total cost!
A text message announces the train we are meeting will be an hour and twenty minutes late. At Toulouse Matabiau, there is pandemonium on the platform! Not for the first time the SNCF has a digital synchronisation failure, provides just two carriages from Toulouse to Clermont Ferrand when the bookings exceed four. Rosie and I wander the time away through the bleak, depressingly quiet streets of a town that was thriving when we arrived twenty years ago. Even the cafés are deserted. I feel their emptiness.
The train, with passengers stuffed like sardines in tomato sauce — for once the heating is on — crawls into the station and Rosies friend tumbles out of the sliding doors loaded with bags, gasping for air, collapses into her arms with tears of relief in his eyes saying, “never again!” in English followed by a litany of French expletives — swearing still sounds so much more acceptable in French — which join those of the forty others to ring around the platform like a modern Christmas carol.
Returning home is less treacherous, my hands less blue, the warmth of my kitchen welcoming. The snow has stopped falling and in the half light of the evening everything shines; the hill, the house, our noses and our hearts.
“It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas…”
DECEMBER 23 — I have a lame sheep, typically, she is the least friendly of the four and catching her alone to administer medication — if needed but I have to try — is not possible. My beloved wakes with a scratchy throat, Rosie too. The snow is turning rapidly to a muddy slush and there is still ALL to prepare and bake and wrap! The day is a fragrant mix of honey and lemon, sheep’s wool, the unmistakable scent of muddy melting snow and Christmas humbug…
DECEMBER 24 — all festive wonder deserts me as I reluctantly join our 2025 Christmas theme of scratchy throat, streaming, red nose and bake my over worked heart out.
DECEMBER 25 — the house smells of woodsmoke and beeswax polish, wrapped secrets are at last placed around the tree and regardless of niggling germs, of only six snowflakes falling when so much more was forecast, of my usually perfect chocolate and caramelised-hazelnut brioche being so much less than that and the Christmas capon refusing to cook until gone five in the afternoon just as we all think it never will be, this day is filled with small wonders I won’t forget; catkins, the first snowdrops, winter light caught in early morning cobwebs so much more magical than any fairy light could ever be, the raven I almost never see swooping so low in front of me I feel the swoosh of his wings and all of us marvelling at what a medicinal miracle hot whisky is.
It’s enough… more than enough.
“Wonder is the heaviest element in the periodic table of the heart. Even a tiny piece of it can stop time.” — Diane Ackerman - also quoted in ‘Days out of Time’ by Jan Elisabeth
Breathless still and always, I send you all love, masked of course just in case!
Lordy, Lordy Susie M. You do stack in the activities and tip-toeing sessions through challenging mine fields. I hope the flu bug has been humbled and sent packing. The absolute nerve of it for imposing itself upon you and yours during this already full up season. I offer you one long, virtual hug and my continued gratitude 🙏 for all the ways you sow and multiply grace in the world. You are a gift!
Saints alive and one winked! There and back again; wonders never cease.... . yes catkins here also even in the north. Ours made it also, six days gone in a blink. The aconites show yellow gold already. We might have snow. Blessed holiday Susie. Thanks, you and the hill.