Christmas Displaced

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

Anna sighed in relief as she finally settled into her island home. She had waited too long in the day on December 24th to seek out her transportation back and had to find a motel in Midland because of the Christmas holiday. The motel had a diner and she had ordered Christmas dinner and watched A Christmas Carol on TV with a sparsely populated crew of truckers. Then she had retired to her room and scrolled through social media on her phone care of the very unpredictable wifi connection. She hadn’t worried about being lonely on Bear Island but the detour had been unpredictably depressing, and she was very glad to be home on December 27^th.

Anna would simply celebrate her solitary holiday a few days late. She baked cookies the first day and a small chicken the next to have with mashed potatoes, steamed carrots and a bit of gravy. It was a vast improvement on the diner turkey meal, which she suspected was a frozen dinner slid onto a nicer plate. Her cousin, who co-owned an amazing little diner in Saskatchewan, would have been appalled.

As Anna got into her tin of cookies after supper she looked outside towards the abode of the other resident of the island. She still hadn’t met the guy who’d left a note on her door and kindly closed it. It was becoming slightly absurd and she worried perhaps a little rude on her part. She took out a smaller container and put a little gift of cookies inside and then snapped the lid on before sticking a little bow on it. She dug around for a card and scrawled a greeting after a few moments deliberation. Did she say Merry Christmas? What if he didn’t celebrate it? And technically the holiday itself had passed because of her delay. Finally she just went with “All the best! From Your Neighbour Anna (Because the squirrels are, in fact, terrible at baking)”

With a little chuckle she pulled on her parka and stepped into her boots and began her trek through the woods. Anna pulled off her mitt and raised her hand to knock on her neighbour’s door and then got hit by a sudden wave of crippling shyness. Stealthily she placed the baking in front of the door and backed away into the darkness. Her footprints in the snow were the only evidence of her attempts aside from the small Tupperware container of shortbread.