I don’t have any idea where all the time has gone this Christmas. I do however know exactly where the food has gone and that would be on a direct flight to my stomach. There are so many things like Mount Scio dressing and peas pudding that I can’t seem to put down at this time of year and that’s even before I take the first bite of the addiction forming substance known as casserole, which has just the right combination of vegetable and fat to glue an artery permanently shut. I guess that’s why they are known as special occasion dishes, because even though a green bean or broccoli casserole “sounds” healthy, anyone who has ever made one or witnessed it’s creation knows it’s pure sin on a dish and I for one love it more than winning a brand new car in a lotto draw. I have also loved being able to sleep in so late, so late that I actually found myself having to lie about it on a couple of occasions to my friends who happen to have kids. I felt like telling them the truth of how much sleep I was getting would be like a slap in the face, especially after they would tell me how happy they were that their child slept until six (in the morning! ). I have loved every minute of catching up with my family and friends ( except for the lying about the sleeping), so much so I even loved losing at Cranium, loved almost getting blown off the side of Fort Amherst by a rogue gust of wind and I loved having to walk halfway home from downtown in high heeled boots at three in the morning because we could not get a cab. In fact I have loved every Christmas this decade and am completely shocked that it’s going to be 2010, It seems like only yesterday we were all gathered for the millennium celebrations in St John’s harbour. So here’s to a new year, to peace, joy, love and hope and maybe if we are really lucky a guilt free recipe for green bean casserole.
There is something about traveling during the holidays that launches a pure panic in me. Any other time of the year the stress threshold of flying is manageable, but get close to Christmas and all of a sudden walking into the airport feels like waltzing into the eye of a storm. I have been in a self inflicted tailspin all day, trying to cram everything I said I was going to do over the last three months into just a few hours and it turns out I wasn’t the only one. Driving to the airport I had to count to ten over and over again, reminding myself to breathe, as I silently but deafeningly repeated “It really doesn’t matter that I forgot my winter boots, cell phone charger and the present for my secret Santa because I am running late, will probably miss my plane and have to turn around and head back home anyway. I can grab the stuff I forgot just as soon as I rebook my flight. ” At which point all my previous and incredibly scarring experiences of rebooking flights to Newfoundland after Christmas snowstorms came flooding back as did the realization that changing my flight would be as difficult as skating up Signal Hill in the rain. We may be known as the nicest people in the world but Newfoundlanders flying home for Christmas thinking they might be stranded is another story entirely. Not for love nor money would a Newfoundlander ever give up their spot on a flight home, sure the mother from “Home Alone” might be begging for someone to give them her seat so she could get home to her stranded eight year old son about to be set upon by robbers. She could offer her house, her car, her jewellery but I guarantee you she wouldn’t have any takers. So with a very real terror, we drove a lot faster and screamed up to the gate, where miraculously there was no one in front of me in line. Not only that, the bags I thought were overweight were under, I got an isle seat on a full plane, and because my flight was delayed an hour I even had time to go to Swiss Chalet ( talk about a Christmas memory). If I didn’t believe in Santa Claus before, I do now, so, so happy to be home.
I am pretty sure that when you are unable to sleep at night and lay awake staring at the ceiling because you feel so awful about something you saw on TV, that you should probably stop watching the offending show. Last night I sat down to watch the season finale of Dexter, the only thing I have watched with any regularity all year and for someone with such a huge aversion to all things blood and guts, a commercial free hour devoted to the lives of a serial killer and his family has a very strange and strong appeal. So at the end of the show when something extremely traumatic happened to Dexter (I don’t want to spoil it just in case you haven’t seen it and after this article you still have some kind of sick desire to) I went into a slight state of shock, as if it had happened to me. After my initial reaction of not being able to breath, my first question was “Am I desensitized or overly sensitized by the media and TV, that I can feel such a kinship with a serial killer?”. My automatic justification of these hyper empathetic feelings was “Yes he is a serial killer, but he only kills other serial killers!”, so I guess the answer is both. In my humble opinion and in no way excusing his philandering ways (of which I am uncomfortable knowing to be truthful) but that in essence is Tiger wood’s big PR problem. Tiger’s entire life and business to this point has been moulded around him being perfect, being the best at everything, without failings or faults. Even as a child he was groomed to be a machine, a veritable golf factory. We humans know that all machines have glitches and people for the most part are greater after learning from our mistakes and in Tiger’s case the lights shone as bright as the sun until all the power went out in an instant and the generator exploded. In so many grown up child star’s behaviour you see sad little kids searching for boundaries, craving discipline, and by the thirteen women (that we know about) that he choose to confide in ,Tiger Woods wanted to be caught. Everyone knows how hard it is to keep your partner happy and couple that with marriage! Imagine adding the stress of an affair, where you have to keep an extra whole being happy, the lies, the double lives, the expectations. Then imagine a life where you have thirteen women demanding your time, your attention and not to mention your physical stamina. Honestly, the man is truly lucky to be alive.
Anybody who knows me in the slightest shouldn’t be surprised that the thing that affected me the most about Rwanda (besides of course for the traveler’s sickness which lasted twelve days and borrowed five pounds) was the children. The choruses of kids running and shouting “Muzungu, Muzungo” ( white person) as we drove down the two lane highway or walked along the red dirt roads was at times deafening. To some of these children in the more remote villages we were the first white people they had ever laid eyes on and they stared at us as if we were in fact aliens. When the initial shock wore off they would practice their english on us, always leading strong with ” My name is…” and becoming shy by the time it came to say their actual names, they held our hands, sang for us and listened to us sing in our strange sounding language with wide eyed excitement. The last day when we were filming in the church where a significant part of the genocide occurred I struggled to keep composure, a few of us wandered outside to sit and grab a breath of fresh air and within minutes a group of about twenty kids gathered and circled us. I remember sitting there thinking ” If only I could speak Kinyarwanda then I could ask just for a hug, because after what I saw today, I really could use one”. At that point I really didn’t care if I looked like a crazy, alien lady, I just opened up my arms and smiled and waited. First a little teeny tiny girl in a faded red dress stepped forward and though tentative at first she cuddled right into me when I squeezed her, then as if on cue the whole front row jumped on line and a few came in for seconds and thirds. I spent the next twenty minutes hugging these kids, deliriously happy and oblivious to the sorrow I had felt so heavily just half an hour before. Without a doubt that moment was the highlight of my trip, even though as I got up to go back inside I was unable to shut my eyes to the visual reminders of the beast inside mankind, I had something with me infinitely more powerful, the endless gift of children’s love and innocence.