We have seen only a handful of Christmases apart, but only because of family geography. (And by family geography I mean that Trudy refused to ever move out while I have crossed an ocean and timezone. She is so needy, it’s really no wonder that they love me the most.) In their lives together my parents have, to my knowledge, never spent a Christmas apart. Mum was determined that today would be no different. Very early this morning we sent Jim his daily self-prescribed concoction of beet, carrot, apple, celery and ‘mystery-plant-from-garden’ juice, that he quite unendingly demands to have, because apparently unlike hospital food, it is “good for him and makes him strong” I reckon that if this juice makes those toes move, then I will tap the juicer right to his IV and run it on high-speed. Again, I make pictures for a living not medical decisions.

We went down to have a lovely visit with dad and brought mum her a plate of christmas breakfast, along with a plate of cupcakes for all the nurses, baked by the delicate hands of my sister with a notable amount of assistance from a box of Betty Crocker.

A lifelong friend of Kareen’s stopped by to show that when you can’t make it to church, the church comes to you. 

The ever adorable Dr. Jose being subjected to yet another family photo shoot.

We set up, with some fair amount of technical shenanigans, a live feed this morning for Jim to watch the grand-babies open gifts, listen to us sing trini christmas songs loudly for Aunty Lorna and some of our English family. There was the usual chorus of incessant talk-laughter-squeals while opening bottles of bubbly to make our breakfast orange juice more effervescent. Trust me, those glasses were deliciously vivacious.

So all in all pretty much a typical scene, except for the empty parent shaped vacuum voids of Dad growling like a pirate and Mum dancing around in some sort of illuminated reindeer hat or bedazzled bosom brooch. (A blog for my Mum could easily be called allofthebosoms.com, but that is quite likely already taken by a completely different genre of online entertainment, I digress…)

We are by nature a frivolous crew and Christmas is just another sugary spike to our hyper tendencies for maximum fun possible. The depths of ridiculousness knows no bounds and for anyone that has shared, experienced, been subjected to our family at christmas, you can always expect that all and everything can happen. Like this did a few years ago…

Growing up mum would hide some of our gifts and make it into a scavenger hunt for us to find, leaving fabulous rhymes and clues for us to follow when trying to hunt down the package. Once she made the clues so wonderfully cryptic that Trudy cried and gave up the search, she was 14 and the present was hidden on the ceiling fan. Best ever.

As a child, if you asked me at any time of the year, what I wanted for Christmas, the answer would always be for the same toy as in the letter I would write to Santa that December. I went through several years and almost the entire population of CareBear stuffed animals like that. What a throughly focused and determined completely boring child I was. If you asked Trudy what she wanted the list could change hourly and daily, encompassing the full range of anything that had caught her eye that minute, day, week. The full extent of her ADHD intelligence has never actually been thoroughly diagnosed.

We have grown up, our worlds and lives have changed, but if you ask either of us today (or evermore) what we have ever really wanted for Christmas the answer would resoundingly be the same. To be healthy and all together. These last few weeks has granted me (and us all) with a very grateful new set of eyes to realize how truly blessed we are. The powerful love we have fostered will forevermore put into perspective that all you really need in life is health and love. Everything else is a trinket.

I would give anything to see this, right here, right now again. And I expect you all would too. Merry Christmas!