A Reunion with Eggnog

The snowfall didn’t abate on my journey home. I hadn’t been back in a long time. I lived on a different continent, so it wasn’t exactly easy to hop across the water and be back at my family home. It was worthwhile making the visit to spend Christmas with my folks. They were getting older, and so was I, and I suddenly didn’t feel like celebrating the holidays alone anymore.

Once I got within one hundred miles of my birthplace, I knew it by the characteristic snowfall that used to plague us every winter. It was beautified by distance and memory. I’d been living in a hot climate, so snow’s charm had returned for me. There were snowploughs moving all around and the cars were edging forward at a snail’s pace, making their final journey home for Christmas Eve. It was a heart-warming scene that made me think of gingerbread browning in the oven and reddened feet toasting by open fires. It warmed my heart as much as it did my senses.

As I approached my family home, it somehow looked smaller than it had to me as a child. Maybe that was the natural course of things. But it was like a dolls house, painted white with pillars upholding the front façade, the bow windows were brightened by fire flame and lamplight from within. I’d never seen a more inviting place in all my lifetime, and I had visited a great many places.

My hand didn’t even make it to the doorbell before the door was flung open. Gasps of joy and wonder came from my relatives. I heard all the usual cliches that come with Yuletide reunions: “you look different!” “when did we last see you?” “it’s lovely we’re finally spending the holidays together." The words didn’t matter so much as the tone. Everyone was visibly and audibly happy to see me.

“You must be frozen,” said my mum, tutting at my saturated coat.

She removed it and hung it up to dry near the fire. I gazed into the ripples of warmth, realising how much I’d missed the place, even if I hadn’t consciously realised it until that moment. Nothing ever seemed to change there and there was comfort to be found in the static; especially because everything else whirled around me, changing at a pace so fast it barely registered with anyone. Constant change might have been interesting, but it wasn’t comforting.

Gentle carols played in the background and candlelight flickered in the quaintly decorated room. I took a seat on my favourite chair. It seemed to have waited for me to return. The upholstery was the same checked delight it had been when I was a child. Nothing in the house seemed to age. It was all so well preserved.

I opened my rucksack and pulled some Christmas cookies from it. They were bought in Duty-Free at the airport, but they looked prettier than anything I could have pulled together myself. I’ve never been much of a baker nor a present wrapper. I had gifts for everyone - at least, I thought I did - none of them wrapped but they were packed up all the same.

I followed my mom into the kitchen in her fluffy slippers. She insisted on getting me a pair too, and a bathrobe straight from the dryer. I was thirty years old, but it felt good to be coddled for a moment. I made my own wilful way in the world the rest of the time. It was good to know that a cozy home awaited me whenever I wanted some respite.

After I got changed into more comfortable clothing and removed my damp travelling gear, my mom gave me a cup of eggnog she had on the stove. It was perfectly aromatic and creamy, and it awakened so many memories of the old life I had: the one that pre-existed the hectic but rewarding adventure that had come after it.

The doorbell rang, and then, my mother told me we were expecting company. We were having a little party of sorts with a few of the neighbours, she said. I opened the door and at eye level, I met a familiar face I hadn’t seen in a decade. It was my first love: the one that I had forced myself to leave behind, to go in pursuit of a more exciting life. His face had aged a little, but not to the point of unrecognizability. His eyes remained unchanged and something inside them seemed to dance when we looked at each other.

“Isabelle,” he said, with genuine excitement  - the kind that ordinarily only comes from a kid’s delight on Christmas morning.

“Joshua, it’s good to see you.”

“I had no idea you were coming home for Christmas.”

“I had no idea you were coming either.”

My mother gave me a knowing smile. I knew she’d set the whole thing up on purpose. She’d always loved Joshua and she’d been as heartbroken as we had when our progressing relationship had come to a standstill. I wondered what he’d been doing for the past decade, but I knew that it was too much to ask in a single question.

“How long are you here for?” he asked me. “Are you back for good?”

“No, just for two weeks,” I said, regretfully.

“We’d better make the most of it,” he said, winking at me. It felt like the decade between us had disappeared and we’d picked up exactly where we’d left off, without the disappointment and bitterness that belonged to the past.

He came inside, I took his coat, and he followed me into the kitchen.

“Your mom's eggnog smells wonderful. It feels like only yesterday I last drank a cup of it. Do you remember that New Year’s?”

I could remember it faintly at first, and then it came into sharp focus in my mind. It had been our last moment of real romance before I’d revealed my plan to relocate. There was something pure and beautiful about it, like it had been crystallized in memory – a moment captured for ever in a snow globe.

My mother’s invitation normally would have annoyed me, because I knew she was meddling, but it was Christmas and I felt forgiving and filled with nothing but thoughts of eggnog, lit fires and old romance.