Alone in the holidays is not sad. It is a gift.

Many people are alone in the holidays. Many people - particularly us immigrants - us wanderers of the world - feel a deep but elegant ‘missing’ that we call ‘I’m fine,darling’ during the holidays.

This is the story of how I spent thirteen consecutive years alone at Christmas. This piece of writing has nothing to do with gardens and managing your place sustainably. It has nothing to do with cuttings and banishing plastic. It does not contain a podcast or an audio book.

But it has everything to do with how I am during this time of year.

Which is why I worry for those who are alone during the holidays. Do you know someone who is alone. So many of us will not be with our families this christmas and I want to reach out to you all and say - it’s OK. You’ve got this.

Please share with someone who might need to read this.

It is OK to be alone during the holidays. I promise.

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The first time I published this piece was November 29, 2011. On my current blog the kitchens garden . com

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The Mists of Christmas

You are all in the countdown until Christmas. I can hear you all wrapping and plotting. Writing lists and checking off names. Putting up Christmas Trees. Re-discovering decorations. I know you are thinking about what you will eat and who will be at the table. You will wonder whether your present is the right one and maybe what you might receive. You will think about the music and what wine to serve.

But not for me. You see, I don’t have the christmas spirit. I don’t know where it went. Well, actually I do know where it went. I am quite prepared for a blinding silence as you read this. That hauled in breath. I know it is your favorite season. But I need to get this said. I need to get these words out of the way if you like.

I am not good with Christmas. Our John calls me the Grinch. But that is perfect because it means I don’t have to explain or pretend to behave any differently. And really it is hard to understand. For him - a person surrounded in his own family. I will try to explain it to YOU though, why my heart elevates to an unreachable place at Christmas. Why my soul becomes a watcher. Why I go into a hiatus. A waiting time. A flux. Detached.

You see, when my children were small their father and I separated, then divorced. I was in my late twenties. I had five children. My own mother had already died, my father moved away, my own family dispersed. Every year after that, for thirteen years actually, I spent Christmas alone. My children went to have Christmas with their beloved Grandmother. Their father’s mother. She was a wonderful person, she adored her grandchildren. Every single summer they would travel almost to the top of New Zealand with their father and his new wife and have Christmas with their Oma and Opa. This was their tradition.

I am deeply grateful that we ensured that the kids were with them each year because they have since passed on.

My kids and I are very close. I had them very young, and divorced very young. The kids and I, we kind of grew up together. They understand this Christmas thing of mine. We did the right thing at Christmas for them. But MY christmas died.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I was not a sorry orphan at Christmas. I woke up alone on Christmas morning but I had friends to visit, usually for an early breakfast with bubbly and strawberries. Then they would go to their families for lunch, (twice I was even kidnapped to go to their parental homes with them but it was not right because my aloneness followed me like a silent cat, I was hopeless, boring and grumpy) so turning down any more kind offers to accompany them, I would proceed to my project. I always set myself a Christmas Day Project. I found contentment in the Christmas Day Project. For some of these years I had a wonderful darkroom in an old walk-in safe in a very old huge dark abandoned railways workshop right beside the sea. It was an enormous enchanted mystery of a space. I would take my dog and work in there. Just close the door and be gone for hours. With my antique enlarger and my rickity timer with its loud click, click. Darkrooms are perfect for absenting yourself. Time means nothing in a darkroom.

When I came up for air (literally) I would go home smelling of fixer with wet black and white prints drying on a towel on the back seat of my empty family sized station wagon, my dog in the passenger seat sat straight up like a person and once I had laid the prints all hung in the art room in my big rented farm house; I would proceed to make my christmas lunch. I always ate the same thing at christmas. A treat of fillet steak and mashed potatoes with gravy (made with Marmite of course) and a salad from the garden.

I rented the movie Breakfast at Tiffanys. Every year.

I would pour myself a glass of champagne, sit on the couch, put my bare summer feet up on the old scarred science classroom coffee table, with fifty year old rude words carved into it, all the windows open to the day, the hot summer breeze wafting through the roses and hollyhocks and eat my steak and mashed potatoes with gravy and say Holly Golightly’s lines for her with my mouth full. I know this sounds a bit sad but really it was not. My kids were having a great time up North and I was determined to be glad for them. They would probably spend the whole afternoon at the beach with their grandparents, their father’s cousins and family. They always did. They were not with me but I was with myself. I was still. Deeply quiet. I moved through the day with purpose. Does this make any sense? No-one bothers you on Christmas day. The phone does not ring. No-one comes to the door. No workers out in the orchards. Stillness and aloneness reign supreme and are welcome.

Later on christmas day in the lovely warm silent afternoon, I would take my three legged black Labrador whose name was Marzellet Mazout the Marzipan Kid and we would go for a walk. A really long walk. No-one is on the roads at Christmas, all the shops are closed. All the cars are gone. On Christmas afternoon New Zealand goes to the beach, so the coastal town became my own town. There was a magical Christmas hush that I used to believe was my consolation prize. This massive empty moment, the pause between words, the hyphen in a thought, when you long for your children’s voices but without quite making the connection between the longing and words. My aloneness was OK. I walked. Time ceased to matter. The endless clatter in my head gentled. The heavy weight of being a single Mum lifted.

I was alone and quiet.

But without realizing it, along the way, I lost the essence of the day. Christmas Day lost me. Like a bright red balloon my holiday spirit unravelled from my fingers and floated away.

Of course Boxing Day was a completely different story. Boxing Day was gathering day at Celi’s. My big wild scented garden would heave with friends and music and laughter on Boxing Day. We would carry couches and tables and chairs out of the house and under the trees. Load tables up with leftovers and bread and wine. We would laugh and talk the trees would ring. But I would still feel my Christmas Day stillness. It would attach itself to me like a long shadow. It would sit behind my laugh. The Christmas Day breath. It is strangely precious. No mirror. No acting. No pretending. It takes days to release its hold. It is a deep quiet that no other day offers. A quiet I can feel today rising out of my subconscious and gathering like a protective mist.

I do give Christmas presents, but not always on Christmas Day. I love to give presents so I give them when I find them. I am hopeless at wrapping and keeping secrets. I do not understand Christmas trees. The whole thing is like a day I missed at school and just never learned.

But that’s ok - right?

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I am with one of my grown children this Christmas but I feel that stillness approaching that silent cool low mist. You never grow out of missing children. From the moment they are born you are afraid when they are out of your sight. There are many, many parents like me who know this. Many, many parents who spend Christmas Day alone due to divorce or adversity. Many, many people without children or family who spend this day alone. A few of my own children will be without family far away out there in the world.

So if YOU are alone on Christmas Day, then you are in good company. Being alone is like being Free.

You have time to Make a Plan.

Let it be special.

Alone can be special.

celi

PS. Tomorrow I will publish my most favorite Christmas post for you - in lieu of the newsletter. PLUS an episode of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Because we can!

Two more weeks and we are back on the freezing cold farm.