So there I am more or less on time for church (and I’m up for coffee but I’m hardly alone – Karen and Laura and and Sandra and Arlette and Tom all got up in cheese cutting and dish washing and table bussing and cake baking and cake cutting and various kinds of arranging and fooding). I take full responsibility for the black tea shortage. I learn from Sandra that Katie has already arrived with Alex and I’m all excited because I’m there to hand out one giant stuffed tyrannosaurus (with a beautiful golden ribbon round his middle cause I’ll be dipped in dogshit before I wrap another present) and also quantity one family heirloom Christmas stocking, made by Alex’s great great grandma Evelyn, which is obviously a much bigger deal that the stuffed animal and made Katie’s eyes light up.
She comes downstairs to nurse Alex who is hongry (he kipped after) and tells me a delightful story about how she’s standing on the Skytrain platform, minding her usual, and a getting on for elderly woman approaches her and says, My vision really sucks and I want to make sure I’m getting the right train (note: the station is a transfer point). Can you put me on the Millennium train? That’s where I’m going, says Katie. I’m actually going to church, the woman says. Me too says Katie. I’m going to Beacon, the woman says. Me too says Katie.
Helen – the woman in question – says one doesn’t expect Unitarian angels but they are everywhere. I wasn’t expecting my daughter to be one.
Alex was deliciously cute in dress pants and a tailored white cotton shirt. He didn’t smile at me but he wiggled and grinned at his mother in that orgy of mutual admiration that is a properly functioning kid-mama bond, and I almost feel there was something wrong, he didn’t fart once.
I have to say I’m a very fond grandma right now.