It’s gotten increasingly harder to take all-cold showers as the season’s worn on. But it never disappoints, that first moment of sensory shock. Scenes of women giving birth in the Baltic from some grainy film we watched when Dawn was pregnant; me making gasping sounds. My friend Alex telling me about scream therapy, paying someone on a weekend retreat to make you scream. The odd interplay between pain and pleasure, getting to where I crave it. Charlotte (17) makes me promise I won’t do it again while she’s on a call with her tutor because it sounds like I’m dying or having sex. Greek for orgasm is “a moment of dying” but I can’t tell her that. Afterwards I sing.

By the time we get to solstice it feels like winter’s over even though it’s just begun. The yard looks battered and soggy but the moss is at its peak, everything electric green and spongey. I put the outdoor lights on from dusk to dawn because we get home after midnight Christmas Eve. We are overrun with sweets and wrapping paper, glazed ham. And always harken back to that Christmas in the Irish countryside with no internet, forced interaction, a lot of leftover ham and nowhere to put it so I just tossed it in the bushes when we left.

Charlotte and I went back to the outdoor mall in North Seattle on Christmas Eve morning, now an annual tradition, so perfect the first time we’ll do it every year now. She was asked to read in front of the congregation and stood up there with Pastor Ric and the advent candles and the words on screen making us proud. Lily’s ex-boyfriend was there though, so we sat in the back trying not to make eye contact. Small talk afterwards as everyone returned their plastic candleholders, then watching more episodes of The Office so she could smudge away any bad feelings from seeing him. Dawn staying up until 2:30 stuffing stockings with chocolates.

And then the day afterwards, St. Stephen’s Day in Ireland with the wren parades, Boxing Day in other places, we’ll go downtown to a Scandinavian-themed hotel with a Greek restaurant called Lola and maybe play cards in the hotel after dinner. We are just doing our best to make memories and enjoy our time together. The weather forecast calls for snow in the mountains and strong wind gusts down below. The sky is the color of an old silver coin. We’ll gather up the bows and stuff them in a bag for next year. Dawn and I will resolve to go off sugar in a week. I’ll work on extending my time in the shower to more than a minute, panting and twisting, emerging from the stall feeling renewed.

Categories: Diary, Errata, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, pacific northwest