Decoration Dedication

So with ofsted over  I de-frost my car and I rush home determined to ‘start’ Christmas . My partner is in the middle of making the boy’s tea but that does not deter me and feeling there is not a second to spare let alone the ten minutes it might take for pasta to boil I bulldoze my way down to the cellar then thump up the narrow stairs precariously balancing the plastic boxes marker penned ‘xmas’.

In what I can only now describe as a kind of mania I huff-a-lump around the place in a flurry of tinsel, first I try to put up fairy lights at the kitchen window and succeed in demolishing my fitted blind – the kids begin jumping over it like little grand national horses.

‘Get away from that, you’ll snap it!!!’ the Grinch in me screams at them and ushers us all into the sitting room with a plastic tree under my arm.

Desperate to put on Christmas music to make this an ‘experience’ for the two little boys I’d neglected a little this week, I bark at my partner to blue tooth something he refuses with a not unreasonable, ‘I’m cooking dinner.’

‘One thing! ‘ I think exasperated ‘We all have to do at least 2 at once, these days! Man up!’

 I search through the free c.d’s my Dad brings us ever year from The Daily Mail (oh, the shame! – Merry Christmas Everyone (so long as you’re not an immigrant, single mum or gay man wanting to marry!) ) Finally I settle on a small, tinny ‘Radio Christmas’ from my net book – we can’t hear it if we talk or try and sing along or breath... it’s not really working!

The three year climbs into the tree box and coffin like closes it up, I scream at the six year old he’s too big to get it and I don’t want to box to rip before I manage to get it back into the cellar, though I have to admit it does make a good pirate ship!

I rush to put up the tree.

‘Dinner’s ready!’ my partner cries from the kitchen,

‘Coming’ I lie.

Clumsily pulling at plastic branches determined this tree would be up before dinner.

I push the second tier of the tree in and ‘snap’ I break the tree.

Tears are starting to prickle the back of my eyes. My partner comes in – he’s fixed the blind in the kitchen and he’s trying not to laugh.

It is funny.

Me - surrounded by tinsel with a limp tree and a goblin on my lip.

He gives me a cuddle, we both laugh and those prickling tears disappear.

We all eat pasta and I calm down.

My partner manages to fix the tree with an old coat hanger and his super brain!

It needs a gentle touch though and as we carefully unwrap the baubles with baby handprints and lolly stick home made decorations the boys delighted with each new decoration, ‘ Look Mummy a reindeer!’ ‘Wow a present!’ ‘It’s a fairy Mummy! Look!’ Look!’

I look at my lovely family and for a brief moment feel content.