Holiday Journal:
Boxing
Saturday, 26 December 2010

It’s the day after Christmas, and we’re expecting a whopping pile of snow here in New York. How nice it would be to do what we did yesterday: absolutely nothing. But we have a date at the Museum; we’re taking a friend from Malaysia to brunch. I’m going to pack my camera, in hopes of capturing some winter wonderland magic out the window.

When I say that we did “absolutely nothing” yesterday, I exaggerate. There was plenty of regular breathing. (And some irregular breathing, too: Kathleen had a bit of a cough.) I made a hero sandwich, and ate half of it in the middle of the afternoon and half of it at midnight, after we watched Eat Pray Love, a movie that seemed about twenty times more ridiculous on DVD than it did in the theatre. (But still very pretty, and almost saved by Richard Jenkins’s fantastic rooftop scene.) Kathleen survived on dinner rolls, applesauce, and a bowl of alphabet noodles. She never really got out of bed. I spent the day planted in my chair, reading The Kindly Ones. (“It’s too depresssing! They’re losing the war.” But I couldn’t put it down.)

The holiday bustle culminated in a lovely Christmas Eve with Megan, Ryan, and Will. We sent the O’Neills home with half a shelf of new books. “But we didn’t bring presents,” Megan protested. We assured her that she and Ryan had indeed brought a present — a little fellow who turns one year old next Saturday morning.