notes and reflections

The house lies on a busy street, behind a battered, locked metal fence topped with cheap, worn plywood.  There is a small unlit courtyard that leads directly to a cold sitting-room entry.  Beyond that is a bedroom, to the right a long room that contains a kitchen with old, badly-used appliances and an adjacent dining room.  The walls are stark, white-painted and devoid of any decoration.  The only concession to taste is the furniture in the entry and dining room.  This is heavy wood, uncomfortable, with hand-carved, brightly painted fruit decorations. The simplicity of the home, its lack of personal touches, photos, paintings, wall hangings, speak loudly of the economic state of the owner.

The appetizers for this traditonal Christmas Eve family gathering also reflect the economics of those assembled: bland, waxy cheeze cubes, sections of hot dogs, potato chips, a bowl of salsa and fruit punch.  The dinner is spartan, Spanish rice and chicken legs in a lightly-spiced mole.  For dessert there is jello.

There are eleven people in attendance ranging in age from their early twenties to one woman in her nineties. It is significant, perhaps, that there is only one man, the boyfriend of one of the middle-aged women.  He speaks little and steps outside from time to time to smoke and perhaps to sip from a flask, since his breath reeks of alchohol. This is a family of women, devout, unmarried or deserted by men, and if the evening's offerings and surroundings are meager, their affection for one another is profoundly obvious, the conversation is rich and warm, at times banal, sometimes serious, sometimes playful.

There is music.  Popular tunes played on a record player probably purchased 50 years previously.  There are solemn prayers, led by the nonegenarian before dinner. At midnight everyone embraces and kisses with wishes for a merry Christmas and there is a brief ceremony in which each in turn, as all sing, holds and rocks, then kisses a tiny plastic baby Jesus.