I'm Normally Perfect (re-upload)

Chapter Twenty-Three

It was snowing when I awoke on Christmas morning. How novel. I stood in my window and watched it for a bit. It never snowed on Christmas where I was from. We might get a ten-minute flurry sometime in February if we were lucky, but it usually melted before hitting the ground. When I'd first moved to England I thought the harshness of the weather would get to me, the way people from the American South complain about the winters in New England, but it hadn't been nearly as bad as I'd expected.

The entire front garden was covered in snow. The big window in the living room would offer a more panoramic view than my little window and I dashed downstairs after my morning ablutions. Cate came clattering down the stairs in my wake and hopped up on the seat in the window in the living room. I watched the snow falling for a few minutes before Alex entered with a tray,

'Look who's up. Both of my Cates.' I smiled at her and Catherine the Great scurried around Alex's carpet slippers. She placed the tray on the coffee table and brought a mug of hot chocolate to me. 'Good Christmas morning, sweetheart.' She kissed me on the crown of my head and straightening up, sipped from her mug.

I beamed out of the window, 'Good morning.'

'Clem not with you?'

'I put her on the floor when I got up, but sometimes it takes her a bit to get a move on, you know. Has to get up the energy for the athletic strain that is tumbling down the stairs.'

'Ah, yes.' We watched the snow. She asked, 'How did you do Christmas in America?'

'Um...well, Dad or one of my siblings would wake everyone up at the crack of dawn, we'd haul out into the living room and unwrap everything as fast as possible then go back to bed. When I woke up a few hours later it was like Christmas all over again because I usually got it over with the first time so I could go back to sleep and didn't remember what I'd unwrapped.'

'That's funny.' She had a sip of her hot chocolate, 'We wouldn't dare wake our parents before a godly hour.'

'That's because you were civilised.' I'd always thought it ruined it, being dragged out before the sun was up and forced to unwrap your gifts.

'Would you like breakfast first? Or presents?' My tummy rumbled audibly and she laughed, 'Would you care to overrule that?'

'No. Let's eat first.'

By the time we'd finished breakfasting, Clem had made her way downstairs and sloppily had her meal then the four of us headed back into the living room to the Christmas tree. We'd spent the night before listening to jazz renditions of Christmas carols and decorating it. Alex hadn't bothered with a tree in years and my family's tree was prefabricated.

When I'd said that to Alex she asked, 'How so? It was plastic?'

'Well, yeah, but all the ornaments were already on it. They'd been chosen to match the colour scheme in the living room.' I was applying silver, plastic icicles to the limbs, and trying not to bunch them too closely together.

She stopped hanging candy canes and looked at me quizzically, 'I don't believe I understand your meaning.'

'The tree was about four feet high, all of the ornaments and lights were on it, and we kept it in the attic wrapped in plastic bags, bin liners you'd call them. A week or so before Christmas we'd haul down the tree, remove the bags, plug it in and voila: instant Christmas.' I laughed at Alex's perplexed expression then went for more icicles.

Her brow furrowed and she asked, 'Is this a common practice in the US?'

'I don't think so. We were the only people that I knew who had one. What was Christmas like at Tillington?'