I spent Christmas Eve and am spending Christmas day in my sister and brother-in-law’s house.
It’s a small but significant cultural shock to be in a home where everything works and the rooms, uncluttered and well-organized, are serene and pleasant.
They recently completed a 10-month redecoration project, and as a result, their home finally reflects their personalities: low-key, comfortable, refined.
We (sis, bro-in-law and my niece, who is pregnant with her first child) spent Christmas Eve looking at old movies and listening to a tape I’d made in 1991, an “interview” with our Ma about her childhood and early adult years. We finished up by preparing the filling for cuplit, a type of ravioli which we’ll make today.
We spent most of yesterday afternoon at the old Milton house. I shoveled the hard-packed ice and dense snow that covered the driveway and walkways from last weekend’s storm, and we managed to fill up two huge bags of trash, clean out the bathroom, bag up clothing for donation to a local shelter and retrieve a number of momentos.
I was thrilled to find the old Argus 35 millimeter camera, which I’d used some years ago and thought was lost. The camera doesn’t have all the modern features and accoutrements, but the lens is incomparable.
There will never be another Christmas like this one, so this is well worth holding in memory for a long, long time.