CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR

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Now let me tell you about Christmas this year. My break started the Thursday before Christmas. For the next couple days, I spent almost all day just walking around Lille and absorbing as much of the Christmas spirit as possible. I found it fairly easy, since it was so beautifully decorated and the streets, sidewalks, and shops were as full as they could be with last-minute shoppers. My original plan had been to go to Montataire on the Sunday before Christmas, the 23rd, spend Christmas with David, and then leave the 26th or 27th.

I ended up heading there a day early. David and I spent the next couple days just hanging out, spending time watching movies and taking walks and drinking wine and making food. Though I know Lille quite well and it is my home now, sometimes a familiar place just cannot compare with a familiar face, especially around the holidays. On Christmas morning, David and I woke up very early. I stayed at the apartment and cleaned it from top to bottom. I actually really enjoy cleaning sometimes. I put on my Cleaning playlist and sang at the top of my lungs while I scrubbed and dusted and mopped and organized. It was great, especially since where I live I can’t really sing like I want to, as I have far too many neighbors. It felt good to be alone and let go. I also got some shopping out of the way - I went and picked up fresh bread from the boulangerie and then bought some juice and breakfast and snack foods (we had done the main shopping the day before).

While I cleaned, David left to go pick up his best friend, Haze, from the airport. He and Haze worked together in Virginia this past summer. Before even meeting him, I felt like I knew him from how much David talks about him, and Haze felt the same about me. I was very excited to meet him, since he is such a close friend of David, and it was good to put a face to the name. We clicked instantly, which was good. When they got back to the house, we made Christmas dinner and David’s friend Jean-Christophe came in to join us. I should mention that a Christmas ham is almost impossible to get - we couldn’t find one anywhere! So we settled for a roast with vegetables, mashed potatoes, and apple pie. Mmm. It was very good. After dinner, we exchanged gifts. Here’s the breakdown:

Haze to me: Crunchy Cheetos!!! (They don’t have them in France.)
Me to Haze: a DVD I knew he would like.
David to Haze: Hard Rock Café glasses from Amsterdam and Paris (He collects them.)
Haze to David: all his stuff from the States that he wanted - clothes, Xbox…
David to me: earrings and two necklaces that are very me (black, red, and silver)
Me to David: a very stylish silver butane lighter and a porte-cartes (how do you say that? It’s a small metal container similar to a cigarette case but smaller and for holding credit cards instead of cigarettes… “porte-cartes” in French…)

The next day, we headed into Paris. The rest of the vacation is kind of a blur. We went sightseeing, as Haze had never been to Paris before. We went to all sorts of fancy soirées and dinners. We went to Versailles and had tea in the house of the Countess of Provence with its owners. We were wined and dined everywhere, we went out almost every night to somewhere different. We spent New Years Eve first at a soirée at our friends’ house and then headed to a very chic and exclusive soirée at the Place des Vosges in an immaculate private residence. I didn’t end up leaving until the third of January instead of on the 26th like I had originally planned.

Anyway, here’s the point.

My favorite moments of the entire vacation were the following:

1. My first few days in Montataire with David. We didn’t do anything incredible, but that’s kind of the point. We spent a lot of time walking around, shopping for food, making food, drinking wine, and just spending time at the apartment. I was glad to get to spend time with my best friend and make preparations for the holiday with him; there was no one with whom I would have rather done that. David is part of my family too, now.

2. One very specific moment in time when David, Haze, and I were in Paris. We were lying across a bed in a dark room, just talking about something not too important, nothing going on, and then there was a silence. In that silence, I’m pretty sure the three of us sighed with contentment all at the same time and there was a sort of silent understand between us that that was exactly where we wanted to be at that moment in time. It was quiet, and we were having a quiet moment with our closest friends during the Christmas season.

It was then that I realized what Christmas is all about. It’s about feeling loved and, therefore, making sure that the people that you love know that you love them. It’s about being close to the people who matter in your life, and about feeling close to those that you cannot actually see. Instead of being sad about the things that I didn’t get to do this year and the people that I didn’t get to see that I usually look forward to at Christmas, I did something different this year. I still got to spend Christmas with people who are very important to me, and I still got to show love and feel loved, which is (in the end) what it’s all about. I know it sounds cliché when you actually read/write something like that, but I mean it. The things I missed or that I usually did at Christmas I honored by talking about them with David and Haze, while still enjoying the new experience I was having.

It was absolutely a wonderful Christmas.

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