Jem and Brydie have chosen kittens and puppies wearing Santa hats for the Christmas cards they’re giving to all their friends at school.
“Yappy Holidays!” barks one.
“Have yourself a furry little Christmas,” mews another.
“Please can we ditch the Santa hat, it’s demeaning…” says a third, deadpan.
Well. It doesn’t, but it wants to.
Brydie is despatching greetings with military precision.
“Can you do some Mum? My arm’s getting a bit sore,” she says, flicking me another envelope to write a name on.
“I think it’s kinda nice if it’s got your writing on it,” I tell her.
“But it’s getting boring,” Brydie says frankly. Fair enough. She’s done about 16 already.
“Maybe if you think hard about the person you’re sending it to and pack some good wishes for a very happy Christmas into the card, that’ll help?”
“Not everyone’s going to have a Happy Christmas though, are they?” says Brydie matter-of-factly, still showering flamboyant ticks across her list.
Jem looks up from her card-writing thoughtfully. “That’s very true, Bry. Not everyone has a happy Christmas.”
“Hmmm,” says Brydie. “What sort of things are going to make them sad, d’you think?”
We name a few things. Not being with the people you love. Not having enough money for presents. Having to be photographed for next year’s Christmas cards wearing a red Santa hat that cuts off the circulation to your ears. And conversation turns to Sandy Hook Elementary School. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and grandparents who will have a sad Christmas for all eternity, remembering the day a little person didn’t come home from school.
We haven’t spoken about it much over the last few days. But now sitting at the table, each of us with a pile of cards, it all comes out. We talk about what could possibly make a person so sad and angry they’d kill their own mum and a whole lot of six year olds they don’t even know. We talk about guns and why it’s so easy to get them in America and why gun control is different in Australia. We talk about the death penalty and whether it’s merciful to have your life ended if you face guilt, bitterness, life in prison- or whether a person’s life is always worth saving. We talk about how hard it is to know what’s going on in another person’s life when they’re quiet at school or mucking up and where their sadness and anger could lead. We wonder what it might feel like to be the quiet, withdrawn kid who nobody really knows and how it feels now to be his father and his brother. And we give Adam Lanza his name along with the name of Victoria Soto, the teacher who protected her class and was killed. Because names are important.
Now it’s midnight and I’ve just snuck out of their bedrooms where the pair of them lie in the half-light, curled in the familiar positions I know and love. I’ve knelt by their beds to watch them, kiss them, stay longer than I need to re-arrange a bear with an adventurous spirit. They are six and eleven and they are here with me, turning days to memories in the blink of an eye, but with me. Just every now and then the gift of the two of them leaves me with a tight chest; a choking fear that it’s all going too fast and at any moment this could all end. And I wonder if I’ll have loved it enough?
Brydie tells us she’s going to live with us forever. I remember Jem saying the same thing when she was six- she’s recently graduated to living nearby with quite a few cats and possibly a handsome character from a Jane Austen novel. There are days you want to just freeze time, before forever becomes now.
Time isn’t the enemy. But the only way to make it a friend is to remember, I guess, that nothing lasts forever- not great happiness, not great sorrow. All I can think right now is that love is stronger than death and that we have love to give: to the ones we hold in the quiet dark, to the ones who are stretching their wings, growing and changing, and especially to the quiet ones we barely know and the ones we may never meet.Time.
Love.
Give.
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