Lib and I were married early in 1981. Christmas 1980 I'm sure we had it with Lib's parents in Wangaratta. I was still working there, we lived in a house in Ryley St, which doubled as the Hume Hwy, trucks running past day and night about thirty metres from our bedroom. It was an older style house, probably 1920/30's build. It's no longer there. A few years after we left Wang the freeway diversion around Wang was built. The house, which was owned by Mrs Yuen in the takeaway Chinese cafe up the road, was bulldozed, as part of the K Mart construction. Where we ate, slept and made love in the front bedroom (the earth literally shook with the trucks), and extracted honey in a back room, has been a car park for nearly four decades.
Every Christmas since then has been a family affair. Initially, back in Wang with Lib's family. For some years Lib worked Monday to Friday so there were years when she could swap with someone who wanted the triple pay. There were some years later we had Christmas at Gembrook, after our kids were born and the house was extended, Lib's parents and sisters and families coming too. That was usually if Lib had to work on the day, and it would be an evening bash. On those days me and the boys would lunch with my family at the farm. Margaret and Phil had a popup van and one year Pat and Michael put a tent up, as did Marg's girls. This was the norm for a while after Moll and Bill got a bit old for it in Wang. There was a Christmas at Bairnsdale at Marg and Phil's, and one or two in Bendigo at Pat and Michaels, who usually alternated having every second with Michael's family. After Molly and Bill died, if P and M were with Michael's fam, Marg and Phil maybe with one of their daughters, it was lunch at the farm, then dinner at home with our boys.
The most memorable for me was the day Gordon was born. That year was just Molly and Bill in the morning, Marg and Phil and kids came in the afternoon. We were opening our presents at about 11am. Lib, heavily pregnant, was due on January 7, coincidentally Molly's birthday, started to get signs of labour. We loaded into my ute and drove to Dandenong hospital. After some trauma during the birthing, during which they sent me out and I could hear Lib's agony from outside, the nature of the complication I was not informed, Gord was born a couple of hours after we got there. Lib's doctor had not made it in time. They bought Lib a hospital Christmas dinner after she recovered, but she had no appetite, and gave it to me.
I went home to Gembrook, a little dazed. I put on Handel's Messiah and played it loud. For unto us a child is born. It gripped my soul. I was floating.
Moll and Bill and Lib's sister Margaret, husband Phil their three kids had a standard Christmas dinner with me that evening. Lib missed that one.
Today, it's just Lib and me. Gord has gone back to Victoria to do it with my family. It would be the first Christmas since I met Lib that we have spent it alone together. She's playing Nick Cave. I'll put on the Messiah before we go out to our picnic lunch at the Bluff, or the little nearby beach. I'm not tired this Christmas. Nice.
Happy Christmas blog readers.
