a Christmas story

Spending the Christmas season away from home was hard. Thanksgiving and Christmas are my favorite times with my family; to have them coincide with the dreaded 2- and 3-month marks of being gone felt like a deadly cocktail of homesickness.

Luckily I landed in my French home-away-from-home for Christmas. We stayed with Amélie’s family in Normandy. Though I spent several days with only the grandparents and four children, 10 adults plus the kids later gathered in the old barn-turned-house. It was a massive change for me, I realized, to be in the middle of a big family. The days surrounding Christmas were bustling with children, cooking, eating, discussing by the fire, and walks around the village. At night we lingered at the table and retired to the playroom to watch a movie, or went our own ways.

A new tradition for me was the creation of a homemade Christmas pageant. I had suggested a skit to the children while alone with them last week, in a moment of desperation. To my surprise, Eliakim, the eldest, responded enthusiastically. Inspired by Christmas pageants of my youth, I began to sing “the Friendly Beasts” to them and create simple costumes in my head. Granted, what actually happened was that one of the four kids abandoned the project, all three forgot what they were supposed to do, and I really should have used a CD instead of singing awkwardly a cappella. But oh man, were the kids cute, with their oversized sweaters, sock tails, and paper ears!

In spite of the soft landing in a hospitable environment, Christmastime was achy. I missed the festivity of Christmas music and cookies and decorations at home, missed my family traditions, and struggled with a long visit in someone else’s family. Eventually I broke down. The day after Christmas, when the remaining 2 children arrived, we had our official Christmas celebration: the pageant, gifts for the children, sweet wine and foie gras for the adults, and a hearty meal all together. In between the pageant and the toasting, I was holding baby Siloa when her little diaper erupted in bright-yellow poop. The poop, known to be difficult to wash out of even cotton onesies, proceeded to seep into my silk, dry-clean-only, polka-dot skirt, one of the few items of clothing I have here that I really love.

I calmly went upstairs to change the diaper, but it wasn’t long until tears came, and once they came they didn’t stop—not in my room as I changed into something else and called on the presence of God, not in the laundry room with stain removers, and not even during the family toasts, as I looked through them to each family member and wished them health.

The good news is, the tears did eventually cease. The Christmas meal was superb French country cooking, topped off with my first-ever bûche de Noel. And by that night, my skirt was not ruined but clean, hung on the drying rack in the playroom.