Unto Us
Christmas came slowly and then very quickly, like the whole year had been in a dream I had when I nodded off in Midnight Mass in candlelight. The end of last year and the beginning of this year were closer together than they have been in the past, mostly because I was in Kazakhstan past the middle of December and then filled a week preparing to examine a PhD on Haitian Creole that I needed to focus on in the way that you do when you’re just on the edge of your expertise. This wall-to-wall work is how I prefer it for whatever Protestant, American reason I know without knowing, something I articulate as losing momentum if I stop too long, or a fear of picking up something I’ve started writing after having been away from it too long. I restarted my work computer upon returning and was immediately prompted to save some file that was open which I did, only to realise I had saved an older file and a day of writing was seemingly gone, until I rummaged around through old files and recovered what I needed, like I was waking up.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day feels like a punishment of getting what I think I desire, but what I really want is just to do good work every day and be so overwhelmed with good work that I don’t notice that anything meaningful has happened until it has passed. Eighteen years ago, when Yoko and I were first together before the holiday and I looked for a Christmas present that became an engagement ring. The next thing I remember after that is yesterday, and my children are no longer children and I feel the oppressive sense that the time is running out. I filled every day of the in-between week with something for us to do — we went to the movies, to London, to shop, anything where we could all be together and happy. The Protestant in me then managed to ruin this by goal-setting and planning, by rushing from one place to the next, by putting pressure on a child to order food, by leaving early, by annoyance with costs, by fear of the crowds, or fear that the underground will be too busy, or fear of the check engine light coming on again. The vacuum dies and we buy a new one, but my unarticulated need for gratitude erupts in anger like my father. I come by it honestly, a long line of men who can’t be sad or scared, who can’t just say that we need to be shown love but can only be angry and hope to feel seen and validated when someone is afraid of us, a god made in our image: fear us or love us, preferably both.
The ability to name and understand one’s Protestantism does little to diminish its effects, unfortunately. On the way back from Kazakhstan, I spent a few hours in transit in Istanbul, concluding that I should never travel on a Saturday again, particularly when the kids are still at home, because travel on a Saturday is wasted time, time that is ostensibly work. I got a message from a friend inviting me for drinks later that night, before I was supposed to go to Mia’s violin concert in the city at seven, and I felt slightly better that I would manage to do the meaningful things I wanted, despite being stuck in the black hole of airplane time travel for the day. I walked back and forth through the crowds in the concourse, trying to keep moving due to another fear that I would immediately gain five pounds if I sat down. I noticed several young men with hair transplants, looking like dogs who’d just been neutered and sadly eating hamburgers and chips in an airport restaurant, and distracted myself by feeling superior and wondering if this was the year when my hair would start to really recede and if I, in some time, would look at these men differently.
The plane was delayed, initially, by thirty minutes and then forty and when I stood up finally to board, I felt the creeping anxiety of not being back in time for drinks, and as the delay got longer, missing Mia’s violin concert, something that was a non-negotiable — I had booked the flight with more than four hours to spare for this specific reason. When I got on the plane, I pushed my way back to my seat and realised there was a family separated, a man in a thobe and kufi separated from his wife behind them, and I said, are you together? That’s my seat by the window, but I can take your seat, and the man who was sitting in the aisle got up excited, and said yes, but his seat was actually up further, in the middle, and I immediately regretted it, turning to the empty seat and a middle-aged white woman, proclaiming loudly that no one was supposed to sit in that seat, that she had gotten a business seat, and she was put back here with the promise that she would have two seats and she had been just discharged from the hospital and if — but by this time I had turned back to the man in the thobe and said, No, I’m sorry, I don’t want to sit there, I can’t deal with that, and he said, No, no, the ticket is— but I cut him off saying I didn’t want to now, that she was upset. His face fell and I climbed over his wife and daughter to the window and opened my book, having tried briefly to be kind — what more does the universe want from me.
The woman continued to proclaim loudly from the seat to whomever was listening that she had surgery in the morning and had been discharged as the announcement came that the flight was full and we were ready for departure as various attendants went up to her and then left, until finally a younger woman in a mask, the leader of the attendants took a tone that made the passenger stop trying to show everyone the receipt on her phone and the man in the thobe sheepishly sat between her and the woman on the aisle and we listened, after the attendant left, to more of the story of the surgery and how straight her legs would need to be and how the man, stuck there, would have to deal with it. We were now an hour late and the pilot came on to say that we had missed our take-off spot and now we would have to wait longer, another fifty minutes, because the airspace over Europe, he said, was too busy, and the collective feeling of being trapped fell on the plane and me counting the time of the flight, then the Uber home to drop my suitcase, then the bus to the concert hall, and trying to work out some seven or eight contingency plans as a way of managing the guilt and sadness of, again, missing something I shouldn’t have missed.
It was, of course, all okay. I missed the drinks, which if I’m honest would have been a stretch anyway, but I made it to the concert and in less than ten minutes was annoyed again with my situation, with having to drag my bag into the car park garage and the crush of people inside. The woman next to me when I finally sat down was reading Searle and when I found a way to bring it up with her, when she asked about the concert programme that Yoko had sent me on my phone, I said something about the book, and she responded, Oh, yes, but don’t quiz me on it, I’ve just started, and I became apologetic, of course, yes, no, it’s just good stuff, and she said, I’ve just started, and the conversation died out. Mia’s group played, and I felt the lull of the season start for the first time, the men with scabbing hairlines and flight delays forgotten, and the Christmas that I want for the Pihlajas of Harborne, about music and silence and candles and the family sitting together for one more year, like it’s a gift to have another year.
I’m settled back at work now. I woke up and ran a speed session at six-twenty, week two of my Manchester Marathon plan. I got home and showered and stood naked in the darkness trying to work out the front of my pants. I said goodbye to Yoko and got on my bike and made my way in the rain through the City to Aston, the Christmas Markets finally, thankfully, taken down. I made a list of things to do, responded to an email, and stood for a minute looking out of my office window at the city, wondering where I thought I would be this time last year. The girls are all a year older, every day now is a test in breaking the curse, in not giving into anger, in not throwing yourself off a balcony, in not saying anything when you should not, and in saying something when you should. There’s no way to tell what the right thing is. I look back at my kids following Yoko and I up the street to Oxford Circus. We are holding hands, to stay together, and they are still there, they are coming along. There is still time to do the right thing.