In the Bleak Midwinter

A yellowed dusk is mellowing the day outside my window. Inside, fairy lights, like pin pricks of hope in red, yellow, blue, green and gold dot the lamp lit room, and a cat presses herself to my thigh, purring. For a moment, just a moment, all is calm, all is bright, and I am at rest.

This, of course, is an interlude. I have laundry to fold, a guest bed to make up, bags to unpack and presents to wrap. Yesterday we shared a family Christmas day with my parents and my brother’s family, and tomorrow we play host and the festivities start again. But just now, I take a pause, let the heart rate come down, let the muscles of my face sag, let my breath grow even and slow.

Christmas as an adult is a lot. The food, the presents, the forgotten trimmings – do we have crackers? Cellotape? Did I fill that prescription, message that friend, finish that work task? Did I bake enough, buy enough, absorb enough magic to see us all through to the first buds of Spring? Have I done enough? Did I make magic memories, did I sing enough hymns, did I eek from the season all that it brings? Do we all have enough?

Until we’ve all had enough.

Until it stops.

Christmas as an autistic child is also a lot. I love Christmas. I need it, here, at the darkest point of the year. This celebration of fostering warmth and peace, and lights. There are other festivals, in other faiths, in which light becomes the centrepiece in this solstice gloom, and I could run with any of them, but I was raised to keep Christmas, and so Christmas is the ritual I perform. And I perform it well. Too well. My children are burnt out. They don’t want to watch a Christmas movie, they want “normal television”, and they don’t want a Christmas meal, just “normal food”. They want the presents, sure, but after yesterday’s gifts, they have shown scant interest in those they have received already, preferring to return to the familiarity of their “normal” things.

And as for me? I still want more. I have worked so hard at Christmas, I always do. I am breathless, exhausted, frazzled and cross. I am perennially disappointed that the gingerbread house is not made, that we have neither ice skated nor followed a light trail, that there has been not one Christmas market. Yes, I want more – but if I look to my heart, what I want more of is this. I want to sit, with the dark gathering at my window, a rug on my lap and the cat at my thigh, and fairy lights reminding me that light will return, and bulbs will break the earth and flowers dot the landscape. And I realise that all the work has been in the service of this. The plunging into London’s frenzied hoards, the standing at bandstands singing with the brass band, the shopping, the coordinating, the festooning and the socialising, has all been for this. To come home. To feel snug and safe against the dark. To relish the nest.

There is more in store. More baking has been requested, and there is a cake to decorate, in our family tradition of sharing the job. There will be wrapping, and cooking, and I am STILL very much hoping for a festive movie. But this breath has been a reminder that in the pursuit of a sense of safety and peace, I can foster instead discombobulation and stress. And I intend to be more mindful of that, tonight and tomorrow.

This “festive” period is different for all of us, but for most of us, it brings emotions to bubble under the skin and erupt in itchy, insomnia inducing bumps. That’s ok. Loss is an extension of love, disappointment the flip side of hope and frustration a side effect of caring. Those uncomfortable feelings sit alongside the one’s we crave, and it is an inevitability that we will know them all in our time. But I hope for each of us we can find a moment this festive season to breath, to set aside wanting more, and to recognise the merits in where we are. And if you cant find any merits, write to me, let me see your heart, and poor as I am, I will give you mine.

Blessed Yule my friends.