Christmas Eve ’99

# Christmas Eve has rules nobody explains

Christmas Eve always feels rehearsed somehow.

Not fake exactly.
Just choreographed.

The apartment looked perfect by six o’clock because Mam believes disorder during holidays reflects moral weakness or possibly national decline.

Candles everywhere.
White flowers.
Silver decorations.
Soft music from another room.

And of course Angel in the air before she even entered the living room. She wore dark velvet tonight and looked so elegant it almost became intimidating. Sometimes I forget other people’s mothers aren’t all silently judging table arrangements while discussing jewelry commissions. Dinner was beautiful in that careful Italian way where emotions hide underneath food, wine, old music, and rituals nobody explains directly because everyone already knows them.

Still, holidays make absences louder.

I kept thinking about Dad in G. smoking near the windows with the sea outside.
About M. somewhere in that same city probably arguing about football or helping somebody untangle boat ropes or doing something impossibly Genovese.

Distance feels sharper on Christmas Eve.

Maybe because everyone secretly wants the impossible thing:
for every person they love to exist in the same room at the same time without history, divorce, geography, work, trains, or adulthood interfering.

Very realistic wish.

After dinner Mom and I sat quietly listening to old songs while lights from the city reflected against the windows.

For a few minutes everything looked almost unreal.
Too beautiful.
Too temporary.

Christmas does that.
It makes ordinary life seem fragile for one evening.

CHRISTMAS EVE.
Remember me,
Eclipse