Boxing Day and Missing the Boy

I love Boxing Day - if anything I think it's better than Christmas Day - no pressure, no cooking, just family and left-overs. Where the name comes from I haven't a clue - something about boxing up gifts for the peasants - I could look it up but it's bound to be dull so I wont.

Boxing Day, like electric kettles and proper sausages and irony, doesn't exist in America. It's not even a (bank) holiday. I'm wondering whether when I live there I can claim it as a cultural holiday-right.

This Christmas has been my first apart from Jeremy in ummm 4 years I think, maybe 5. I've managed to cajole him into spending the last 2 Christmases in England - I thought I was onto a winner this year too but he had the cheek to want to spend it with his family rather than mine. He also did his usual trick of never quite categorically saying he wasn't coming ('I don't think I can' rather than 'no'), so right up until Christmas eveevening I was holding out hope for a surprise arrival.

Maybe because I was half expecting him to walk through the door bearing a rocking chair (my Christmas gift-request, yes I know I sound like I'm a grandma already but I really like rocking) at any time, or because I was focusing primarily on the thought of sleeping in a bed for the first time in 6 months (that plan was well and truly scuppered in a joint effort between my Grandma usurping my sister's bed and my sister very selfishly refusing to sleep on the floor and insisting on sharing my bed), I hadn't really given much thought to him not being here this Christmas.

Christmas morning I was distracted by presents and then by food, so it wasn't really until the afternoon (one of those endless afternoons that only seem to happen at Christmas... but maybe that's just the TV/Internet ban enforced by my mother) that I really noticed he wasn't around and The Missing set in.

Missing Jeremy has been something of a constant over the past 6.5 years (with an 18 month gap when doing my masters in Boston). It's become such a habit that I even miss him when we're together, but that's more of an anticipatory missing and is less potent. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, that I'd be able to turn down volume on The Missing, and focus on the fact that soon we'll be together... you might think that but you don't know me very well if you do.

On an average day, missing Jeremy is something like a constant low electrical hum - like a big fridge that's trying to cool itself down, or the sound of Marc's tiscali box recording 'Match of the Day' - it's there, it's a little annoying but it's manageable. But on some days it ups the ante and causes brain interference, and no matter what I do I can't shake it. Phones suddenly become malicious non-ringing meanies, collaborating with my email account and mobile in non-conveyance of Jeremy contact. And me? Well the brain interference means I can't quite concentrate on the matters at hand, so I become reserved and distracted and, well, grumpy.

So that was me yesterday afternoon- distracted and grumpy and resenting all forms of communication-technology. There were some highlights which distracted me from my distraction momentarily- my new red Hunter wellies, walking with Mum and Jess in the cold and the quiet, laughing at Jess when she fell over on the ice, laughing more when she fell over a second time and dragged mum down with her (I didn't try and help, I just took photographs)...

Finally I called Jeremy and it turned out he'd been trying to get in touch all day but our mobiles had conspired against us. And the Missing Mist lifted - yes he was still 3000 miles away but there he was on the end of the phone, missing me right back, and that helped some.

So today I'm back to the electrical-hum sort of missing, buoyed by the knowledge that this is my last Boxing day without him, although it's arguable whether I'll see another Boxing day for a while if I'm going to be stateside next Christmas...but that's a whole other conversation yet to be had...