Holiday Reflections
written by: Karen Southall Watts
@askkaren
“What about the year we drove four hours to your folks’ house and left all the presents in the garage? Or that time your assistant gave you the flu, which you gave to me, which meant a whole night of…”
“Alright, you win.” Donna rolled her eyes and put down her phone.
“Maybe it’s not the worst Christmas Eve ever, but it’s up there.”
She crossed the kitchen and started fixing a pot of coffee. When the blizzard hit, Donna and her husband, Rob, were sound asleep. They woke to phones blinking with notices of cancelations, and they didn’t even bother to call the restaurant to nix dinner. All the roads were impassable.
“What I don’t understand,” Donna vigorously pushed the START button, “is how my watch can tell my blood pressure, the fridge can order milk, and the TV knows what I’ve been watching for the last six months, but the weather service missed a huge snowstorm.”
“Maybe nature likes to remind us who’s boss sometimes? Grab the coffee stuff and meet me by the Christmas tree.”
Donna set the tray down on the table in front of the couch. Rob popped out from behind the Christmas tree with his hands full of packages. He put the festive little boxes on the floor at Donna’s feet and proceeded to remove the plastic wrapping from two candy canes he’d liberated from the backside of the tree. He put one in each coffee cup and made a show of stirring. Donna let a laugh bubble past her annoyance.
They had forgone a big family Christmas not only to avoid the pain of travel, but to avoid the even greater pain of their hyper-political relatives. The traditional turkey and dressing, with the not-so-secret ingredient of dried apricots, wasn’t worth hours of listening to drunk uncles and cousins expound on current events. Passing on the arguments and indigestion was an easy choice. Donna had been looking forward to the English-style holiday feast at an exclusive boutique restaurant though, and she was still fighting the urge to mope.
“Christmas omelet, my lady?”
“Why yes, thank you giver-of-cozy-socks.”
The morning passed through breakfast, another pot of coffee, and half a box of chocolates Donna got as a ‘Secret Santa’ gift at work. They lounged in the pajamas and fuzzy socks from Rob’s morning gift stash. In between snacks and snuggles, they each attacked their stack of unread books. There would be no fancy dinner out, but the snow-covered and closed-down world felt peaceful and sweet.
Then the power went out.
A scramble for flashlights, then batteries, and then candles and matches led into a realization that dinner was going to be peanut butter sandwiches and raw vegetables by firelight. The couple popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. Outside they could hear the snowplow finally crunching down their street, and sirens in the distance.
The food was gone and the wine was going flat, and even in front of the fireplace the house was getting cold. Donna brought the quilt down from the bed, and they set up a little nest in front of the hearth and planned to sleep off the disappointment of a less-than-perfect Christmas Eve. Just as Rob started to snore, there was a loud pounding on the front door.
“Okay, who bangs on the door during a blizzard?”
Rob was making his way to the door grumbling under his breath. He was not a happy waker-upper.
“Hey, be careful. It’s dark. Maybe it’s the power company. Rob, are you listening to me?”
“Well, guys ho, ho, ho to you too.”
Rob came back into the living room carrying a dirty cardboard box. A mewing cardboard box.
“Kittens! Rob, those are kittens. Where did they come from?”
“Well, the note says, ‘I can’t afford to feed them.’”
Two little orange faces poked up with a chorus of meows. Donna fell in love. The kittens were surprisingly clean, and after most of a can of tuna and some fresh water, they began to look sleepy-eyed. Donna wiped their faces and plopped down in front of the fireplace with them. Rob had taken the emergency cat litter for oil spills from the garage, cut down their box, and crafted a makeshift litter box. Then everyone settled down again. Purring, quiet snoring, and the occasional pop from the fireplace were the only sounds for hours.
All the lights, the furnace fan, and the beeping timer on the stove all went off at the same time. Humans and felines scattered in confusion. Rob checked his phone.
“It’s three-thirty in the morning.”
“Thanks for the announcement, Honey. Wanna take this party upstairs? I’d like to get off the floor now that the heat’s back on.”
“What about the boys?”
“You’re kidding, right? Of course they’re coming upstairs with us.”
It only took Rob a few minutes to get the quilt and pillows back on the bed and the temporary litterbox into the bathroom. Donna set up a water bowl, and then placed the two orange fuzz balls onto the bed. She crawled under the covers and stretched the kinks out of her back. Rob turned the lights back out and carefully got in bed, feeling around to locate the kittens before settling down. Donna reached over to hold his hand.
“Rob, this was the best Christmas Eve ever.”
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