A Christmas Story: Down The Chimmney

The first year of the new millennia is slowly drawing to a close, and in cold and snowy Helsinki, five-year-old Sofia and nine-year-old Hugo eagerly await the arrival of Christmas and along with it their gifts. Delivered by the proverbial Santa Claus. Or are they? Nothing is ever crystal clear and obvious in our multicultural English-Spanish-Finnish family. And especially not traditions. I ponder with Sofia and Hugo’s Finnish Papa, ‘Finnman’, how we are to 'deliver' this Christmas tradition. Our family background encompasses three distinct cultures with three different bearers of gifts, and we are rather perplexed as to which of the customs we should settle on. We ponder this matter at length and examine each tradition in detail and from many angles.

Does Santa Claus make his appearance Finnish style, through the door laden with gifts presenting himself to a captivated audience of children on Christmas Eve after they have eaten their festive meal? or does he deliver the gifts English style, surreptitiously makes his way down the chimmney on the night before Christmas as the children sleep without making his presence known? or do we make both Santas redundant and have the gifts delivered in Spanish style by three mates, better known as The Three Wise Men, twelve days later? Another option would be to combine all three into one mega back-to-back gift giving bonanza. This last scenario is dismissed almost as immediately as it presents itself, as impractical, unreasonable and simply unaffordable.

Finnmann tells me that he cannot for the life of him understand why an English Santa would choose to enter a home down the chimmney when he can see that there is a front door perfectly suitable for this purpose. The Finnish Santa has clearly figured out that there is a more practical way of delivering gifts without ending up covered with soot. I understand his point of view but the problem with the Finnish Santa is that, when the big man finally arrives boldly making his way in through the front door, the Finnish Papa can never be found and the children always have to tell him the wondrous sight that he missed on yet another Christmas Eve. The English children on the other hand, are entitled to feel smug with their own lot because their Santa delivers the packages during the night when all are sleeping, and as soon as they wake up the next morning, they can dive right in and begin the joyful task of unwrapping. No need to wait for a Christmas meal to be consumed and no need to search for a missing Papa. As for the Spanish children, their gifts are delivered twelve days after the whole party is over and the Finnish and English children have already long ago ripped open theirs. As I have often seen with myself and many of my fellow Spaniards; late for everything and that includes Christmas!

After much pondering and head-scratching we decide to be radical and settle on none of the above options. We choose not to favour any tradition in particular and instead tell Hugo and Sofia that all these mystical bearers of gifts are actually characters within wonderful stories, but that in reality the presents are from people that love them very much and who want to remember them on this special day. They are very happy with this explanation. As long as they get their presents, they do not care who they are delivered by. Unfortunately, I forget to add that they have explosive information on their hands and to exercise the utmost caution in its diffusion.

Its already mid-December and after work I go to the child-minder to pick up Sofia, her brother Hugo is already in school. Petra is a truly wonderful woman and we all adore her, 'spare Mummy' as Sofia calls her. According to Sofia, she is the wisest woman in the entire universe; 'Petra is sooo clever, Mummy', she breathlessly tells me one day as I collect her from day care, 'she knows everything. She even knows when it's the weekend!' On this particular day, Petra takes me aside for a private conversation. She has a worried look on her face. 'We have a problem', Petra tells me in a very serious tone.' Sofia is telling the other children in the group that Santa Claus doesn't exist and that the gifts are from actual people.' I listen to her in earnest. 'It's utter pandemonium at playtime. I have alternately arguing and weeping children on my hands, and we're all meant to be getting into the Christmas spirit. She has to stop this!' Later that evening I talk with Sofia about this most delicate matter. She says she cannot tell a lie once she knows the truth. Why do I have such a principled five-year-old? In the end, we reach an acceptable settlement: when the other children in the group are excitedly talking about Santa Claus, Sofia promises not to expose her earth-shattering revelation. In return, a knowing smile and subtle nodding of heads is exchanged between her and Petra as if to say 'the secret is just between us.’ The children are happy, the child-minder is happy, and my daughter is happy.

Wise nine-year-old Hugo puts all this uproar into perspective. 'Mummy, how come parents tell their children they must never lie, but they then lie to their children about Santa Claus?'  I tell him he has a good point. Across cultures, why do adults justify dishonesty in the name of maintaining traditions?  I give this matter some though and slowly begin to understand that there may indeed be many valuable reasons for gifts to be delivered across cultures by bearded men walking in through doors, sliding down chimmneys or arriving late with friends in tow. All appear as if from nowhere, distributing to their captivated audiences treasures laden with fantasy and imagination, before finally stealing back into the night from whence they came. Without fantasy, there is no imagination, and without imagination, no passion to capture the soul. Without passion, life is reduced to a bleak two-dimensional existence. The elements of make-believe surrounding Santa Claus and The Three Wise Men indeed serve their own purpose in this circle of life. What better gift can there be for a child, than a mind filled with imagination that knows no limits, and fantasy that knows no boundaries? And as for the child-minder Petra, our daughter obviously left a lasting impression on her, because her first grandchild bears her name: Sofia

                       

To be continued...

Next post 1st January : The Notebook



Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some small additions from private family archives.

Gathering and Remembering

Three long hours have elapsed since we said our last goodbye to our Spanish Papa (see post Share The Sorrow). Mama, Sis, my English niece Zara and I have now returned to the village of San Juan to await the arrival of his body and begin el Duelo,The Wake. Our hearts are heavy as we prepare ourselves for what is to come. At Mama's apartment we hurriedly wash our faces, our eyes still puffy from the many tears shed around Papa's bedside, and then hastily prepare some sandwiches and coffee. No one is remotely hungry but we have eaten nothing since breakfast and it will be a long time before we can eat again. After we have completed our tasks we walk the short journey towards the tanatorio, the mortuary where Papa's body will rest for the remainder of the day, into the night, and then onto the following day. In accordance with Spanish Law, the funeral will take place the first full day after his death. Sis and I have lived our adult lives outside Spain and have never been to a Wake so do not know what to expect. We are in for a fascinating cultural anthropological experience.  

We arrive at the mortuary, located adjacent to the Catholic Church in a separate building precisely for such occasions, and Papa's coffin is already there surrounded by candles and wreaths. Laying inside is our Papa finally at rest. The man from the Santa Lucia funeral parlour is already expecting us in the small office next door, waiting to take down the personal details for Papa's obituary which will be published in the following day's newspaper. Before he does so he offers us his deepest condolences, and we thank him for his kindness; name, date of birth, date of passing, and finally names of family members left behind in mourning; wife, daughters, grandchildren, brother and son-in-law. Meticulously he notes down the particulars for this client and his family and I notice in passing that he is left handed. Sis and I are amazed at the efficiency with which events are unfolding. Papa has not been pronounced dead four hours, yet already The Wake is under way, the wreaths have been delivered around the coffin, and the obituary has been prepared. We are both used to living in a part of Europe where the deceased is stored away in refrigerated lockers for days or weeks, waiting for the family members to slowly gather and prepare for the funeral. Here the wake and funeral is a well-oiled machine taking on a life all of its own. For the twenty-four hours after the final farewell, the needs of the departed take precedence over the needs of the living, and all else fades into oblivion. To both of us, it seems a fitting tribute to the end of a loved one's life. We already like what we see.

Mama, Sis, Zara and I then take our rightful places as next-of-kin on the seats immediately next to the coffin and wait for the whole village to appear. The doors of the morgue are finally opened and in they slowly stream: aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbours from our village, from the next one and the one after that. People that we know from our childhood and people that we have never met before. But they all knew Papa. Here they all are solemnly walking past our small family unit, kissing us on either cheek and Sharing Our Sorrow and paying their last respects. After peeking into the coffin, each person respectfully crosses themselves before taking a seat at one of the many chairs dispersed around the coffin and we begin to talk with one another in hushed tones occasionally wiping away the tears with handkerchiefs that every visitor seems to possess in profuse quantities. The solemn group of people gathered around us on this heavy day are indeed a far cry from the boisterous and flamboyant Spaniards that I recollect from my childhood.

I discreetly observe my eighteen-year old English niece Zara, seated beside me not far away from Papa’s coffin. Freshly arrived on the Island for her gap year just one month ago, she has already witnessed something in her short life that has taken me a half century; the death of another human being, her Grandfather, as we stood around Papa’s bed only a few hours ago (see post Share The Sorrow ). Many of the Wake visitors that pass by our family to kiss us and pay their respects also greet Zara with the words, ‘Que guapa! how beautiful!’ and she blushes in her charmingly reserved English manner. I explain to her that female beauty is a greatly valued attribute within the Spanish culture and that Spaniards readily pronounce their opinions on such matters so she had better get used to hearing this phrase during her year on our Island. ‘What happens if you are unlucky enough to not be beautiful?' She whispers in my ear rather perplexed when the queue of mourners has slightly abated, ’will they then say ‘Que fea! How ugly!’ ‘Of course, not!’ I tell her, ‘in that case they will just say nothing.’ Zara has only been amongst us one month, in time she will get used to the local ways, and after our fleeting exchange is over we return our attention to the immediate task at hand: Meeting, Greeting and Weeping.

We now begin to share stories with one another about the Papa that we knew, and during those moments of beautiful crystal-clear recollections, Papa is as alive as anyone in the room. The person in that coffin has silently arisen and is wandering in and out of our hearts and minds, stopping by for a while to share a warm moment with anyone that cares to welcome him into the inner-most sanctuary of that special place that we call Memories, before returning back to his place of rest. Mama tells us that when we lived in England, he once took a bag of sliced bread with him on a shopping excursion to buy a toaster. 'What on the earth are you taking that for?' Mama asks him, 'so that I can test the toaster, of course!' he replies in earnest. And we smile through the tears. It feels good to be held captive to this minute fragment of joy, and in doing so return to the land of the living. Sis tells me that her English husband affectionately called Papa, 'The Mercedes Man': The first thing that Papa did with his retirement lump sum was to buy himself a shiny, new Mercedes. Papa's love for his cars was legendary, he was known at the local garage as the only man who took his car for repairs and demanded to have all the old parts returned to him. Sis conjures up an image of once seeing him happily parked on the side of the road, picking out the stones that had become embedded in the tyres of his beloved car. And again, we all smile. Yes, he certainly was unique. The Papa I best remember is that of my early childhood; newly arrived from my Island and living on a chicken farm somewhere in the middle of England with no idea of what adventures lay ahead of me, Papa would be there to navigate and see me though this new land with strange language, strange customs and strange people (see post Watching The English Part I And II ).

Papa was not always from our Island, Mama reminds us. He came from a faraway place on the Spanish mainland called Andalucia and came to Our Island to do his Military Service, La Mili, at the end of the 1950's, fell in love with Mama and the Island and never returned. As a child, I always called Papa's homeland, 'The Other Planet' as it was a place so far away it felt like another world. Even though Papa left The Other Planet to come and live with Mama on our Island, he always carried his homeland within him in the form of the flamenco music that flowed in his veins and a voice brimming with depth and passion. A voice that has been passed down to his half Spanish granddaughters. I did not inherit this gift, but Papa bequeathed me equally valuable riches; eyes the colour of mahogany and a deep Andalusian soul. A soul that also lives within Hugo and Sofia, his Finnish-Spanish grandchildren. And I realise that Papa has not vanished from our lives for eternity, rather he still lives on in his beautiful grandchildren. Grandchildren like the ones I heard and saw in the village this morning. Young and revelling in the luxury of childhood, they are already impatiently awaiting the arrival of Christmas and along with it copious amounts of gifts, just as it was with Hugo and Sofia many moons ago. 

To be continued...

Next post 25th December: A Christmas Story: Down The Chimmney


Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some small additions from private family archives.

Share The Sorrow

Each arriving from our own corners of Europe, we gather with Mama around Papa's bedside (See post Share The Moment). From England, there is Sis and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Zara and from Finland there is myself. I have already been in Tenerife four days, Sis has just arrived the previous day after been told that Papa does not have much time left. Zara is now living on the Island with Mama, taking a gap year and immersing herself in her Canarian Island roots. Forty years after Sis and I departed our Island for new lands (see post Share The Moon), Zara has made the journey in the reverse direction. Papa would have been happy. 

It's late October, and outside the hospital room the Autumn sun has already climbed high into a cloudless blue sky, shining gloriously with almost shameless impunity on this saddest of days. Not far away from us, families from their own corners of Europe are sunning themselves on the Island's many beaches, frolicking in the warm Atlantic waters and creating joyful holiday memories. For them the visit to our Island is a moment of carefree existence. For the four women gathered around this hospital bed on a sunny Saturday morning, it is a moment of pain as we Share The Sorrow. Papa is dying.

His breathing is heavy and it pains us to see him in this way. We gather around taking it in turns to hold his hand and whisper in his ear that we are here, that we have returned and that we love him. Gently, Papa awakens and with a flicker of recognition acknowledges our presence, hungrily drinking us in one by one with those mahogany coloured Andalusian eyes that penetrate to the very core of your soul, creating with no spoken words a thousand tender images. His girls have returned to say their last farewell. He is at peace. The nurse asks us to momentarily leave the room whilst she and her colleague carry out their morning duties. We do as we are bid and wait outside in the long corridor until eventually, we return back to Papa's bedside.

Papa is now wearing clean nightclothes and has a calm and serene appearance that we have not seen before. His breathing is no longer laboured, now it is like watching a child peacefully at sleep. He then draws one last shallow breath, closes his eyes and in the flicker of an instant, in the space of an infinitesimal micro-second, is gone. Realisation and along with it immense pain fills us and we clutch one other and begin to weep: It feels incomprehensible that he was here with us just one second ago, but now is gone for eternity. The nurse arrives and tells us that it was a beautiful end. Exactly one hour and twenty minutes have elapsed since our arrival by his bedside. He waited for his loved ones to gather before taking his leave. She sees this so often, and I can see her own eyes welling up as she shares this small comfort with us.

And with Papa's passing I bear witness within the same year to yet another monumental farewell: farewell to a parent, farewell to the end of a twenty-five-year marriage and along with it half a lifetime, and farewell to a family home embedded within its muted walls a million silent memories and a thousand shattered dreams. But the farewell that hurts most is you, Papa. You have gone over to The Other Side, to a better place where old age, illness and pain can no longer ravage your body. But I know that one day we will meet again, and when we do neither of us will feel pain nor sorrow: You will be my young and strong Papa and I will be once more your little girl, sitting on your lap in the caravan at the chicken farm as we recite the new English words of the day in our terrible Spanish accents (see post Watching The English Part I and II). But now is not that time. I am now a Mama myself and still have much to do. Your soul has flown away but your body is still here and we still have one last journey to share together. But before that final journey we have The Wake. 

To be continued.....

Next post 18th December: Gathering And Remembering


Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some small additions from private family archives.

Share The Moment

It is the present moment, and now a Mama myself, I return to my Island. But one important person is missing . In time, we will revisit the little Spanish girl in new and distant lands, but for now it is today.

The Boeing 737 slowly approaches the runway, sleekly gliding itself onto the tarmac with an almost imperceptible bump. We have reached our destination. The flight from Helsinki to Tenerife has taken almost six hours, and the little Spanish girl who climbed onto a plane back in the 1970's taking her to distant lands with emerald-coloured fields has returned home (see post Share The Moon). That distant land was called England and it gave her a new life and a new name (see post A Girl Named Marie), but back on the Island she is once again Mari-Carmen, the same little girl who scoured the skies for storks, eagerly anticipating the delivery of a new baby sister. Over forty years separate that journey from today. Forty years that have discarded along the way eight US Presidents, beginning with Richard Nixon and ending with Barack Obama. Yet it feels like yesterday. But time stops for no one, not even for a little Spanish girl with two names.

Mama meets us at the airport as she often does. Now in her seventies and once again living in Tenerife, she is still as energetic as the young Mama I remembered back in her twenties in the caravan and on the chicken farm (see post Watching The English Part I And II). Her older brother, Uncle Fernando also in his seventies is with her, and together the four of us embark on the drive to our village on the Southern tip of the island. With me on this journey is my twenty-one-year-old daughter, Sofia. The scenery around us is one of serene beauty and we contemplate our surroundings with gratitude. Gratitude that we are once again in the cradle of our family roots. The sea and sky are both of a magnetic blue and with no clear boundary separating them. Heaven and earth blend together seamlessly in this tiny corner of paradise. After the cold Finnish winter that we have left behind us, the balmy air soothes our skin like warm honey. Mama and I can once again Share The Moon from the same window (see post Share The Moon), and joining us will be the next generation of Sanz women.

We pass by the sprawling Playa de las Américas, 'Beach of the Americas' tourist resort, its origins as a clandestine departure point for undocumented passengers stowing away on furtive boats to South America largely forgotten by locals, and completely unknown to the colossal mass of visitors that populate its hotels year after year. And once again I am that little girl, running up and down an empty swimming pool in this yet-to-be-born resort, revelling in the luxury of untainted childhood innocence (see post Share The Moon).

It feels therapeutic being back on my beach and closing the circle with my own child. The sun shines high in the sky, and the waves crash powerfully onto the black sand just as they did when I was a four-year old enjoying a family picnic with Mama, Papa and my many Sanz cousins (see post Share The Moon). Now I am here with my own daughter. The sands of time have trickled away, and with it have slowly vanished the buds of youth and innocence, but for my beach time has stood still and it feels like I have never been away. I wish I could meet with Papa and Share The Moment with him. I would tell him that I am well, that his grand-daughter, Sofia is with me on the beach on this day and at this moment, that her older brother Hugo is back home in Finland writing his thesis for the final part of his Master's Degree and planning his forthcoming wedding to Julia, that they are both immensely proud of their Spanish heritage. But I cannot say any of this, because Papa is no longer with us.

That strong man who once comforted me on his lap when I was tormented at school for being different, for coming from my Island (see post B Is For Bullied), is now looking down upon his family from above. His pioneering years were spent living amongst the English, but the pull of home was too strong to resist and he spent the twilight years back home on Our Island. One complete year separates our final farewell, yet on this beach yesterday, today and tomorrow all fuse together into one timeless entity with neither beginning nor end, and in my mind, I am drawn back to that last goodbye.

To be continued......

Next post 11th December: Share The Sorrow



Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some small additions from private family archives.