We didn’t leave right away. I pulled myself together and washed my face again and we stayed until Landon had fallen asleep on the couch. He was completely worn out and so was I, but for different reasons. Janine tried to wake him up and it didn’t work, and Remo ended up carrying him upstairs […]
When someone dies, even someone you didn’t know that well, don’t you feel like everything kind of… stops? For a moment? Like the whole engine of the world that is made up of all the people connected to that person stutters for a second?
Christmas morning went exactly the way it should for a five-year-old and not bad for the rest of us either. When Ziggy and I arrived at the house, Landon was already completely sugared up and had opened one of his gifts “from Santa”–a toy truck–and was preceding to turn the living room into a miniature […]
When Claire didn’t come back downstairs after an hour, a small debate ensued about whether we should go and check on her. While me and Courtney and Janine were arguing about it, Ziggy just went and looked in on her, and then came down to say she was lying down but she was fine. I […]
Janine grilled us when we got back downstairs. “Are you sure he’s asleep?” “Pretty sure. That or he’s a good faker,” I said as we sat down at the table and Court started passing us dishes. “Why?” “It’s a miracle is all. A kid who actually goes to sleep on Christmas Eve?” Janine put the […]
I got out of cooking duty because I had to be the one to go get Ziggy at the airport. Not that I would have minded cooking, but with Claire and Janine butting heads over how each little thing should be done, it was probably better that I vacate. Claire had done a lot of […]
The next day was Christmas Eve proper. Court and I got to the house maybe an hour before noon to find Janine and Claire in an argument and Landon nowhere to be seen. “Traditionally,” Claire was saying, “we would have Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve and open gifts then and on Christmas Day it would […]
Of course it turned out that Christmas cookies are not just any cookies you happen to bake for/on Christmas. There was a specific kind of cookie that Claire had in mind. She told Landon all about them while we were rolling out the dough and using cookie cutters, all about how making these cookies was […]
We had made our way all the way to the produce department before my mind circled back to something in that conversation. From things I’d learned from Janine and Courtney and Claire herself since arriving in Tennessee, I was putting together the timeline of my older sister’s lives. Claire’s whole “there wasn’t family to take […]
(Sorry to be posting late! Monday holiday confused me. But here we are! -ctan) — The next day Remo left and Claire declared it was Cookie Baking Day. I didn’t realize that the traditional holiday calendar had Cookie Baking Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Boxing Day, but to hear Claire tell it, we would have […]