Christmas 2014

Time speeds up you get older. I have been in this place for five years now. I can hardly believe it. It seems just the other day that I moved in. When I was young, five years was a long time. The four years I spent at university seemed very much longer than the five years I have been living at Evergreen. There are various theories why this should be. I have seen more than one theory featured in "Brain-pickings"(that delightful collection of writings I receive weekly by e-mail) I like theories, especially ones that it is impossible to prove. The latest one I have thought up is this.: As you get older you slow down, Everything takes you up to twice as long, from getting dressed in the morning to the weekly shopping. This means that in each day fewer tasks are completed. Looking back on the day, it is emptier and naturally seems shorter. Your memory also is not as good. So as well as having fewer incidents to remember, more of these incidents will have been forgotten. Then there is also a lot of repetition in your memories. You may have spent several holidays at the same resort and done the same things each time, you may have worked at the same job for several years, and of course, when you have retired, one day is very like another, so although day by day time may even seem to drag by, in retrospect days pass quickly because remembering them takes so little time. But I see I meant to write about Christmas. I wasn't looking forward to it, because it seemed it would be an anticlimax after such an eventful year. Most of my family are now far away and only Luke and Danielle were to have Christmas dinner with me. I was very unenthusiastic about Christmas preparations, but once I started with the cooking of ham and turkey and the wrapping of presents, I began to enjoy myself and in the end had a lovely time with my two delightful grandchildren. We were going to go to Midnight Mass, but decided in the end that we were too tired and Luke and I went to the 8.30 service instead. I am so glad we did. A number of Malawians from the off-shoot Malawian church in Vrygrond had hired a bus to bring them to All Saints and the church was quite full in spite of there having been two other Christmas services. The Christmas service was joyful, as always and it was a bonus to have the Malawian Youth choir to sing two carols for us.