No silent nights for me

Home again, home again jiggety-jig. Or so the nursery rhyme goes. I was wondering why I felt so unmotivated to clear out the Christmas clutter after returning from my trip south of the border to visit relatives. The lights went on after I'd finished relating my activities pre / post Christmas to a friend. Three days with daughter number one, her partner, half brother, neighbor and grandchildren five; four days with sisters and their families - ten persons including moi and daughter number two; one day hosting Christmas dinner for ten - separated husband, daughter number two, sons one and two, one friend, and four sundry relatives. Four days traveling roughly 4500 kilometers. I feel like I should have my own version of the twelve days of Christmas.

While I absolutely adore my family members, interacting with 28 different people with whom I have intimate relationships over a twelve day period is rather intense. Considering that two of those people also were felled with mystery illnesses during my visit south added an anxiety level not experienced since the year my oldest son brought a virulent 48 hour intestinal flu to which all twenty visitors at my sister's house succumbed. It proved an interesting experiment in epidemiology as the last to get sick had a much weaker version of the illness than those of us who had had it first. Of course, they didn't get off easy since they had to nurse us all as one by one we fell to the dread disease. I remember two things in vivid detail: my brother in law intoning "bring out your dead, bring out your dead" as he went from room to room carrying ginger ale to the suffering and the panicky feeling that I might not get to one of the two bathrooms in time. It was a bonding experience we all remember almost fondly.

I have a personality quirk that makes overcoming difficult or humiliating circumstances among my favourite stories to tell. This year was no different. The trip south started auspiciously enough. Daughter number two and I were well provided with treats and amusements to last the eight to ten hours we expected the trip to last. We did not however expect to be parked on the 401 highway for two hours while a tractor trailer cab fitfully burned out a few kilometers ahead of us. Minutes before we slowed, then crawled, then stopped, I had started to look for service centres as I needed to pee. At first I tried to wait it out, but after the first emergency vehicles sirened their way along the shoulder, I figured I'd better look for alternatives and made a visual recognizance of the available spots.

Despite the fact that the only cover was 60 meters away, down a ditch through thigh deep snow, up the opposite side, and over a barbed wire fence, I decided I couldn't stand it any longer and made a break for it. After a first attempt in which I floundered in thigh deep snow, I figured that by stomping on the snow I could pack it down enough so that it would support my weight. It took me, oh, about 30 minutes to make a path to the fence. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had sunk as deeply as she could out of sight in the passenger seat, observed that my activities had attracted the notice of many of our fellow stranded travelers, luring them out of their vehicles to watch my slow but steady progress with curiosity. When I climbed the fence and disappeared into the bush, they all seemed to at last understand the reason behind my bizarre behaviour. I had actually expected that others would use my path to relief after I returned, but no one, to my disappointment, did.

Although an over zealous guilty conscience kicks in whenever I'm faced with uniformed people, crossing the border is normally not a problem. However, minutes before hitting the border we realized that my daughter and I were traveling on passports from different countries. The guard might pull us aside to extract an explanation causing unwanted further delays. So my daughter, the world traveler, admonished me: "What ever you do, don't tell them we are related or that we have food". Of course the very first questions the guard asks me are, "what is your relationship?" and "do you have any food items?". Unable to lie, without adequate preparation, I blurted out, "She's my daughter" and "Yes, we brought a lunch". Despite these faux pas, either the Force was with us or profiling worked to my advantage once again, because the guard waved us through without further ado. If I were so inclined, I could make a lucrative income smuggling since most border guards are willing to suspend suspicion for we middle aged women.

The rest of that trip was uneventful weather wise, except for the last two hours during which we had to travel through dense fog, feeling joyful deliverance when visibility rose to 50% - most of the time it hovered between 5 - 10%. Once we emerged from the fog, my daughter who had driven through it collapsed, exhausted, and I drove the last fifteen minutes. A wonderful welcome awaited us - my sister had prepared h'or d'oeuvres and Jambalaya for us. We feasted on great food, wonderful company and agonized with my other sister over her dreadfully ill son, who, as it turned out had an abscessed tonsil (!). Before we left another nephew became violently ill with what turned out to be appendicitis, requiring immediate surgery. Was it something I said?

All's well that ends well, and both young men are on the road to recovery. My second daughter made it back to Berlin in one piece, and I am safely back home in Canada. So ends my twelve days of Christmas and so begins the look forward into a new year.