The ox and lamb kept time

By Bill Pearse on December 25, 2025 • ( 0 )

I got crumbs on myself but didn’t care. Everything slanted downwards. The crumbs got caught in the folds of my robe but dislodged and rolled like stones into the folds of the couch. All about it was gray and serene, this Christmas morning. The lighting just right. Some choral singers in the speakers. Maybe Vienna boys, the best kind. We had lots of leftover gingerbread scraps from the house-making party with the girls and I ate a whole side panel. There was nothing wrong with it, no idea why it was in the scrap pile. A bad icing job perhaps.

They said possibly sleet starting soon yet part of me wanted to be out in it still walking, sucking in the clean air, looking about on the empty streets. The time all the families start to gather around the tree to see what they got. It was a strange, special time.

I often thought back to that Christmas we spent in Ireland and the morning we woke in that rental house in the middle of nowhere Cork. Zero internet or Wi-Fi, don’t even think about it. Phones for cameras and that’s it. None of those photos around anymore really, pre-cloud storage.

There was a room like a greenhouse off the house that was set down a bit and surrounded in glass. That’s where the owners put up a fake tree for us. The glass fogged up when we were in there and blurred the green Irish countryside. It was the best of Christmases we said because we were all together with mom, immersed in each other’s company.

But that was 10 years ago now and today, this is the best Christmas. I have a pot of beans soaking for the ham hock and some carrots and celery, onion and fennel on the kitchen island. That soup will simmer all day. I’ll cut the tendons in the side of the ham hock to let out the gelatin and we’ll have ham incense from dawn to dusk.

I lit a stick of frankincense incense and rolled a foil ball for the cat to chase. When he brought it back he wheezed from his constant congestion. He sounded like a pervert breathing on the other end of the phone.

I’d do the salmon and locks for my wife and a sleeve of cinnamon rolls for the kids so they could wake to that smell. Tomorrow we’d catch the Mukilteo ferry for Whidbey Island and hole up in a little town by the water for three nights.

These are the best of times, I wrote in a card for my wife. Best to you and yours too, Bill