Christmas Karma

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HolidayDigest

By Eileen Keighley
By Eileen Keighley

Aunt Olive was old, when old meant something else; she smelled slightly fusty, drank sherry before dinner, and wore hand knitted sweaters. On the up side, being old didn’t stop her being kind, funny, and always made us a freshly baked cake when we got home from school. She was also notorious for her lack of style and passion for knitting; announcing cheerfully in a strong Scottish accent, “Girls, look at my latest knitting pattern, it’s a skirt, with lovely flowers on it. Would you like one?” Her creations, so unique and mostly beyond wearable, were too much even for my mother, who was known for buying us some ugly clothes and quietly thanked her. She immediately put them in a drawer ready to use in the dog basket.

Then last year, having been in Laguna about six years, I unpacked the last of our moving boxes and discovered along with some decaying Christmas chocolates, decorations spanning a lifetime of memories, and a knitted Christmas stocking hardly big enough for a tangerine, but which we had to religiously hang on the mantle.

As a child, Christmas was a time of joy and horror; anticipation and frustration. It was enough to carefully “lose” Olive’s presents during the year, but at Christmas we all had to show gratitude as we opened our homemade, very predictable and totally useless gifts: knitted slippers, sparkly balaclava hats to ski in, without the cut outs so essentially a long hat, and once even a school bag.

Then, without warning, the knitting needles were rested and in came C&A gift vouchers, and quite a lot of them. C&A was the newest department store in Edinburgh and while some referred to it as cheap and awful, to my sister and I, having been used to knitted presents, a voucher was to be cherished.

Christmas would never be the same. Gone was family togetherness, the niceties and politeness between siblings, cousins and even spouses; we were a divided family – the have and the have nots, the smug voucher recipients and those like my sister and I who still were suffering the humiliation of wearing her presents throughout Christmas lunch.

After the third year, my sister, now well into her teens, had had enough, and vowed the next year things would be different. She was right. “Remember last year? Well, it’s not happening again,” she reminded me on Christmas morning. “I have a plan to switch out her presents. She always muddles up names and won’t notice, and if she does, we’ll blame George. He’s always in trouble.”

I protested, but having never won an argument with her I agreed and was pleased with our efforts. We had our vouchers. However, as with most bad deeds, there are consequences, and for me a rather large white bandage around my left index finger. I just meant to create a diversion, but the knife was sharp, the cut deep and I unleashed enough blood to ruin a large percentage of Christmas lunch.

Later on and still wearing one of Aunt Olive’s creations, my mother was unusually thoughtful and I felt uneasy. Her intuition was drilling into my veins, while trying to work out just what had happened. My guilt grew as my chatter fell; she’d always worked so hard to make Christmas special and while the family were eating turkey with what was left of the trimmings, we were at the emergency room. After an hour waiting, her Christmas cheer had worn very thin and she looked at me, “I believe in karma don’t you?”

Eileen Keighley, of Laguna Niguel, loves to eat out, trawl food shops, is an avid home cook, has taken many cookery workshops across Europe and even entered TV’s “Masterchef.”

 

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