Oakville Christmas

It was hot, I was hung over and I didn’t have time for all this shit.

Why do I do this? Why don’t I just say that Christmas lunch at the club would be fine. I love lunching with a thousand randoms and their screaming offspring. So I offered our place, five acres of rather dusty grazing land on a hill far enough away that we could forget we worked in the city.

I stayed up til god knows when the night before wrapping presents, weeping and singing along to Christmas carols on the TV. Generalised exhaustion and panic blending to a mix of I-don’t-give-a-rats’s-arse and everything-must-be-perfect-for-this-special-day anxiety. Slurping home made egg nog which was entirely unsuitable to summer in Australia but the very strong nog made up for the milky egg. 

I had thirty-five level one family members coming for lunch, (outside, thank god) but as always Christmas lurks around in the back of your mind until suddenly it’s too late and you’re not ready! Just get some chooks, solves every problem. Chooks and salad, bread rolls and some fresh prawns. With sufficient alcohol, backyard cricket and…

“Ough!” my head really hurt as I sat up, sweaty already and of course it was raining. “Really?! OUCH!” I snapped. Raining for an outdoor lunch. Wow my head was expanding and contracting as the blood thumped through. I didn’t think skulls could expand and contract. They can’t, that’s why it hurts so much. 

I squinted my eyes nearly shut and shuffled toward the bathroom and the aspirin, no not strong enough, the ibuprofen. Big swallow and then just sit on the loo with eyes closed to let time heal. (Hoping a frog hadn’t got through the crack in the septic tank lid and swum it’s way through to the loo, only to leap to freedom and land on your bare bum. Terrifying for everyone.)

Showering, the cool water streaming over wet hair felt therapeutic and almost made my skull stop pulsing. I was clean, smelled nice, and not sweaty. Well not for this ten minutes. Bugger it, I let it run for ten more. At least the spent water would flow out to the citrus trees and give them a drink.

When I opened my eyes the sun was shining, and outside the window the she-oaks shimmered like they were covered in tiny raindrop crystals. They filtered the sun back to layered shade, and smelled like Christmas pine trees with a hint of petrichor. I was becoming myself again, and had taught myself that noticing and noting the tiny beauties of nature would drag me step-by-step out of that crazy grumpy sadness and into a happier simpler self.

As I smiled and told the trees they were pretty this morning,  I heard a tiny cheep cheep cheep cheep, cheep cheep cheep cheep. On the window’s flyscreen a tiny black prince was singing to me, his little cicada legs gripping the wires, his freshly metamorphosed body quivering in song. “You sweet little thing, Merry Christmas to you too!” I whispered. I wondered how long his above-ground life would be, singing sweetly for a mate, buzzing around on the breeze, or snapped up by a magpie for lunch.

The breeze, I thought lyrically, would come in April as Autumn oozed across the farm. But for now it was hot. Hotter than the sun. So hot that some days we just fled to the cinema or shops to sit in the air conditioning, and even stayed in a motel now and then just to get some sleep in the coolness. My English/Scottish skin would be purple by the time guests arrived, and no point in wearing makeup, even if you’d slathered your face with anti-perspirant spray first. Sweat wins every time. “Not sweat!” my nanna would chastise. “Animals sweat, men perspire and ladies feel the heat.”

I was feeling it.

I opened up the house for an hour, letting the rain’s freshness clear away the stale air of yesterday. Soon I would close it up again, draw the curtains and keep the house as dark as possible to limit the sun’s reach. After lunch we might run the sprinkler, for the kids, and the magpies, to play in and cool off a bit, and as it hit the outside walls of the house, it would cool that too. I might just sit under it as well.

And so our Christmas day began. A coffee and toast sitting under the big gums, the cicadas warming up to their pulsing screaming crescendo, the horse snuffling in his breakfast bowl, a bit of chaff, a bit of hay, a salt lick at the bottom. 

Soon it would be crazy noise, kids everywhere, too much food and zillions of flies and don’t drink red wine in the heat. Dogs barking and trying to out-field the cricket team. Nieces and nephews and stepkids off exploring, hunting for fresh figs or oranges, roses and hopefully no snakes this year. The horse snooping along after them, ever the sticky-beak, sometimes stealing a sun hat. The dog after that, waiting for a horse poop to roll in. The cat after that, who knows why except if she didn’t go she’d miss out, leaping over tussocks of dry grass to see where she was going.

Our house is so quiet until it’s so loud. Our family has no volume control. It’s full on joyful screaming, occasional wounded knee or splintered hand tears, nothing that can’t be fixed by a long warm bath, all the kids in together, plenty of bubbles and a few water pistols.

My partner would be the loudest, the biggest kid, the heartiest eater, the craziest cricketer, the leader of the pack. When everyone was gone I’d find him asleep in alcohol’s arms. And after I’d packed up the leftovers, scooped the trash into the bin, fed the animals, washed the dishes and the sun was finally giving up for the day, he’d wake “Oh that was fun, time to tidy up… wait, who did that?!”