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Of course, this is the last Christmas weekend I mean. The one who was like no one before.
If you buy almost everything online, then you must be happy if at least one thing or another is correct, because nothing really looks like the picture.
That little bright pink top for the girl was downright scary. The sturdy jacket, made in Spain, was too short in the sleeves, the little nine year old Spaniards may have shorter ones than the little Swedes. Little Swedes can be amazingly advanced though. Because in the middle of Christmas Eve dinner, between a bite of prince sausage and another bite of Santa Claus, she put down the silverware and said very seriously:
– Grandma, when did your breasts start to grow?
Please honey, I thought, still small, just worry about childish things.
But I replied that if they ever started to grow up, I would be many years older than you now. Do you want another foam elf?
The sweater that I started knitting for her in March, when everything changed, and which was finished last week, she was able to put it on as a dress and settled in.
It turned out as it did, it cannot be returned. But now it’s the returns that I’ll be able to make in the near future and it’s probably that complicated. Surprisingly, many of the Christmas gifts I ordered came in double editions and it was obviously my fault. Man, or at least I do, I click keys a little carelessly when shopping online. And check even more carelessly what’s in the confirmation email.
We won’t sit at home with good friends and watch the new year like we used to.
I packed several duplicates as pats for loved ones who really shouldn’t have received anything. They were surprisingly grateful and I was relieved not to have to return them right now when everything is a little more complicated to do than it usually is.
It is now New Years Eve, but nothing will be the same tonight. We will not sit at home with good friends and watch the new year like we used to, we will sit on the sofa at home in our pajamas and slap the countess and the servant. And we may fall asleep long before noon. The only thing I would miss then is Kristina Adolphson and her way of reading “The Eternal” by Esaias Tegnér on the radio: “Well, the strong with the sword shapes their world …”. It is important, it is powerful, it gives hope.
The future? If it’d exist? There are many of us who may be a little more concerned right now, keeping our fingers crossed that everything went well despite this Christmas and how we couldn’t help but behave. That we weren’t careful enough, that we took risks. And we still don’t know if we make it.
We’ve been so good all of the past year, most of us. We have been so afraid of others and of each other. We have barely entered a single store, we have always had a mouth guard in a special plastic bag in our pocket, we have washed our hands so that they have become rough and chewy, we have almost swallowed hand alcohol. We have not been among those who flirted with the fact that they “were naughty” when ignoring others and among them, we have not ignored it. But at Christmas it exploded. Then we hug, although not others. But let him not be punished. And it won’t.
We will have a really good New Years, if not much better!
