XXX-MAS
We tumble into the house, giggling, glove-clad, breathy. We slam the door on the dark and the cold. We are welcomed by the warmth of the mansion.
We work as a team to get the tree into the drawing room. We huff and puff and settle it into its stand. We high-five. We stand back, proud, and assess it. It is beautiful, but bare. It is a shame; we must dress it.
The fourteen year old takes her place at the piano and plays. The housekeeper hands out hot chocolate. “Lovely. Thank you”, I say. I wrap my fingers around it and sip. It warms my chest. Laughter warms my ears. Smiles; my soul. Milky and sweet.
It is a painfully perfect scene. I cannot enjoy it, because it reminds me of what I don’t have. This is the dream that is sold to us. This is the end, the goal. Beyond this, there is nothing.
What if I never get ‘this’?
The fourteen year old begins singing Let It Be. She has a lovely voice that is slightly raspy, owing to lack of use. Only when she is comfortable, and trusting of those within ear-shot, does she sing.
The housekeeper rubs my arm and nods admiringly.
The five year old is playfully decorated by her siblings. She chuckles as they hoist her up, and say she shall be the angel at the top.
Baubles are hung. Tinsel is draped. Home-made snowflakes are balanced.
The love in the room needn’t be hung, nor draped, nor balanced. It lingers, independently - palpable without promotion. Milky and sweet.
As the fourteen year old drifts, seamlessly, into the penultimate bar of Chopin’s nocturne Opus 9, the lights are switched on. Spots of white suddenly stutter within the needles, like wild wakening eyes, deep in the thick fur of a beast.
The piano stops.
The walls gasp.
We take it in.
Glorious.
The thirteen year old begins laughing, at odds with the occasion.
“Look”, he says, pointing, “I made dick and bollocks out of two baubles and a twirly thing”.
The Male Nanny
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