The christmas card

I look out of the cottage window to sea, at the boats cheerfully lit up with Christmas lights despite the pouring rain. I have to decide what I’m going to do about this Christmas card. Do I write it or not?

I hold the pen over the card. It’s the same pen I always use. Just like I set aside this one evening every year, get out my address book and write my cards.

I love to write them. I love to receive them. So many people just want to send an email these days, but a card takes time and thought.

I look at the little fire blazing merrily in the grate and Morgan the cat sitting on the windowsill, gazing out into the rainy night and the lit-up boats bobbing merrily on the water.

I start to write.

Dear Jeannie

But what next? How do I say what I really want to? Do I just leave it? Not send the card?

Or should I just write the same thing I do each year: We must meet up in the New Year!

We never do. But it feels good to know we could if we wanted to.

Time has moved on, though. A lot has happened since we last saw each other.

Somehow the Christmas card has become a habit. A way of staying in touch without having to fill in the gaps of what’s happened in the last year, and wondering whether life has moved on for them too.

The meeting up again hasn’t transpired, just the promise, which is repeated every year but never acted on.

I put the pen down and sip my wine. Outside, the weather seems to be worsening. Rain is starting to lash against the window.

Suddenly there’s a rumble of thunder and a flash. Morgan jumps from his place on the windowsill, on to the back of the sofa and into my lap, upending the wine and spilling it all over the card and my address book.

“Oh no! Morgan!”

He jumps down and settles in front of the fire, unperturbed. I look down at the spoiled card and wipe at it, the ink running and staining with the wine.

My pile of written cards, with stamps and addresses on them, sit to the side, ready to send. I’d bought just the right number, as I do each year, and that was my last one.

I stand up and toss the ruined card on to the fire. I didn’t know whether to write it and now I can’t, I really want to.

But that’s that. Decision made.

I doubt she’ll notice she didn’t get a card from me this year, anyway. A