I was reflecting this morning on the way things used to be, which I know isn’t a very helpful point of view for either the midst of a pandemic or the weird week between Christmas and New Years when nobody really knows what’s going on or what day it is anyway. It used to be that our family celebrated most of the 12 days of Christmas, and round about now I’d be organizing myself for my mum’s big party at her place, looking forward to seeing Tupp and Susan, and embracing how I’d come up with my share of appetizers for 50.

Needless to say the minute those thoughts entered my mind I shut that (*&^ down. Now is not the time – almost two years into a pandemic that’s breaking a lot of hearts at present – to get anything remotely resembling wistful. This is a time when you look straight ahead my poppets, so the minute that I felt my spirits start to fall into what my dear friend Judith would call “a decline” I drank a big glass of water, changed into my running stuff and headed out for a cold, fierce run. Two things about this, first – to the knitter who recognized me on the street as I was hitting the 3.5km mark – I apologize for not being far more personable and for not telling you that your festive red, white and green scarf was very pretty. It was- and I thought that and several nice things in the moment, but in my defence I was barely clinging to life and oxygen, so know that whatever it was that I gasped at you was a poor outward reflection of my inward feelings, but there is really only so much that a knitter in her 50’s is capable of saying at that point. Second – “Come and get your love” may be one of the greatest running tracks ever.

We are out the other side of Christmas here – our current version being only one day, and it was very nice. I am not going to even go to the place where I say that it was “nice for a pandemic version” or “nice considering what the restrictions and risks will allow” nor will I tell you that we just about set fire to brunch because the right people weren’t here to do the right jobs, and that there are few pictures because the rhythm of the thing was all funny. At this point, please take it as read that we desperately miss the folks we can’t see right now, and that all our versions of things this year were scaled down, but we’ve decided to focus on what we’ve got, rather than what we don’t, because most of us don’t run, or at least not enough to deal with those feelings.

Instead we found a lot of happiness in the things we were able to do- a teeny tiny version of our gingerbread party, just enough to make memories for Elliot,

Tree trimming at Auntie Banda’s house after she joined our bubble,

A lovely quiet Christmas Eve.

We moved our traditional Christmas brunch outside so we could welcome Ken (we have a patio heater we bought to make this a little more realistic and we’d like to thank the Toronto weather for being mild) and knitted twinkly stars made it cheerful,

Elliot was everything else we needed to be happy (every time he opened a gift, big or small, he said “I’ve been wanting this for YEARS!”) and our Christmas dinner was sweet and small and we all fit around the table this year, and we pulled our crackers and wore our paper crowns which was really rather thrilling for Elliot, since he has been trying to have the Christmas crackers on every table we set for a month.

I took a particular pleasure this year in presents mailed far and near – especially all the Starry Lights (rav link) – just about everyone that got one sent me a picture of where they’d placed it, and I loved that. (It is worth noting here that I knit nine. NINE of them, and I am not sure I am done. Say what you want about me, but I really know how to get on an obsession.)

Sea Ink (rav link) was finished in time to be mailed north – it was a glorious knit. I used Eco+ in black (never again, lace in black, never again) and the finished project is HUGE and fantastic and I have no doubt that when the box was opened, and the thing wound round the recipient, that it worked just the way knitted things are meant to.

Like mailed love. Hang in there petals – love the ones you’re with.