Christmas holidays…
Mom, Dad, and Grandpa. That’s how it was in the beginning. Grandpa passed away first, then Dad, and now Mom was gone.
What I remember from my family home are Christmas flavors, smells, and colors.
The taste of carp in jelly, dumplings with mushrooms, dumplings with sauerkraut, borscht, gingerbread, and poppy seed cake, and special: boiled wheat with poppy seeds and honey served on Christmas Eve.
Additionally, smoked ham bought only once a year, Coca-Cola from a glass bottle, bars with cherry filling.
Christmas tree, shiny baubles, orange, green, red lights and angel hair. I was always looking for angel hair a few days before Christmas in small shops and luckily I always managed to get it. The light shines through them so beautifully.
The smell in the kitchen. Everything smelled like Christmas. Especially sauerkraut fried in butter with forest mushrooms and gingerbread. The unique smell of Christmas.
The smell of gingerbread, the smell of cabbage and mushrooms, the smell of oranges and tangerines, cloves, anise, and cinnamon.
Candies in colorful, shiny, and rustling papers.
Walnuts.
Christmas wafer.
Some things stay the same. Dumplings with mushrooms, borscht, gingerbread, poppy seed cake, and cola in a glass bottle. For years now.
Some things are gone or don’t taste the same as they used to. Carp in jelly, candies, and a bar with cherry filling.
Christmas colors: green, red, white, orange. And every color must shine and sparkle.
Recipe for Christmas: lots of lights, lots of smells, lots of colors.
This year, a dog named Emi joined our family. She moved into the shelter after her owner died in March this year. She was already with us in June. Home acclimatization was completed in one day. Our new companion. Our blessing in times of mourning.
And our cats will be at the Christmas table. Okay, I admit honestly that sometimes they will also be on the table. It’s cat nature.
There was an Ikea Christmas Film in which a family sat down for Christmas Eve dinner at several different tables. There were different chairs around the tables and there was a kitchen cart with a cat lying on it. There was also a dog. The tableware was a jumble of miscellany. And I liked it.
This year it will be very similar for us. Family. Little. People of different ages, with different views on life, after different losses, are in the process of mourning for the loss of our Mother. And cats. And a dog.
We stick together and help each other get through difficult times.
All those who have already left us will also be with us. They will come into our memories. Holidays also belong to them.
I would like to bring some of this Christmas glow and some colors into everyday life.
Let ordinary days also sparkle a little, shine, and have light.
Sometimes we put aside what is shiny and sparkle for later. Too often.
Let this holiday time be a link between something special and every day.
“We need bridges when the river of time flows. Christmas today should be about creating happy hours for tomorrow and reliving those of yesterday” (Gladys Taber).
I wish you, my dears, and myself:
Lots of Christmas flavors, smells, and colors.
Lots of light that will illuminate any darkness.
Flavors that will take us back in time to the past that we remember well.
Colors that will please our eyes and allow us to see a brighter and more colorful version of the next days.
Let everything around you sparkle, shine, and rustle like Christmas candy wrappers.
And a quote from the movie Kung Fu Panda: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. But today it is a gift of fate. And gifts are there to be enjoyed.
I wish you this and more,
with all the power of my imperfect words,
Yours M.
