A Place At The Table

We have so many happy family traditions, and our lovely mum is at the heart of them all…

Tradition is big in our family. Easter, summer holidays, Hallowe’en, New Year’s Day. You name it and we Watsons have our own way of doing it.

There’s always a chocolate bunny hunt in our parents’ garden (because that’s where we all go to meet up even though we’ve got our own homes and families now). Summer holidays are in the same caravan park in Cornwall where they took us as kids. (Every now and then we think about going abroad but we know it wouldn’t be the same).

On October the thirty-first, Mum spends ages carving out pumpkins with the kids (“It’s what grannies are for,” she’ll say with a rosy smile on her face). And on New Year’s Day, we all meet up for a good bracing walk through the woods. But it’s Christmas which really takes the biscuit.

“Can’t we go to my parents for a change?” my husband once asked me. We’d only been married for a year then and I was pregnant with the twins. My mother had been knitting since the day I knew I was expecting.

“Of course not,” I said, horrified. To be honest, the thought had never occurred to me. It wasn’t that I was being selfish. It’s just that… well… Christmas wouldn’t be the same without being at Mum’s house. Besides, Dad would have expected it.

There’s simply nothing like coming in through the front door of the small terraced house where we’d grown up, smelling the waft of potatoes and thyme, the roast turkey, the veggie roast (for my sister Amy), the leeks au gratin, the Brussels sprouts with chestnuts, the touch of our mother’s soft cheek against ours, her delighted “come here, darlings” when the grandchildren run towards her open arms, the sound of Aled Jones singing carols from the antiquated stereo system in the living room which my parents refused to replace because “if it’s not broken, it doesn’t need fixing”.

My sisters felt the same. “Little Women”, one of my brothers-in-law calls us – not without good reason. It was our mother’s favourite story when she was a child and it’s why we’re all named as we are.

I’m the bookish one like Jo. Then there’s Amy, who’s a dreadful flirt and on her third marriage. As we all agree, she could charm the birds off the trees! Dear Beth is always the first to go down with a cough or a cold. And Meg, the eldest, manages to look graceful yet stylish even though she and her teacher husband struggle with their mortgage payments.

We also live near each other – well, within a radius of about fifty miles – which is pretty rare in today’s day and age. Most of my friends don’t see their families from one Christmas to the next.

“Don’t yours get on your nerves?” they sometimes ask me.

“Of course,” I’d say, recalling how Amy had nicked my new hairstyling wand the last time she’d come round. “But I can’t imagine it any other way.”

Our kids had a riot too. Dad’s narrow strip of a back garden was once his pride and joy with his broad beans, sweet peas and marrows. But when Meg’s son was born fifteen years ago, the first grandchild, Dad bought a swing. “He’s far too young,” Mum had said. “You’ll be surprised,” Dad replied. “Time goes faster than any of us know.”

Had he known then what was going to happen? I’m still not sure.

The swing was followed by a blue plastic slide which “Father Christmas” delivered.

“It’s too cold, you daft brush,” Mum had said, giving Dad’s hair an affectionate ruffle.

But we all had a high old time, trying it out in the snow on Boxing Day before we went off to the in-laws – the compromise I’d reached with my husband that turned out to suit his parents perfectly, too.

We all had a HIGH OLD TIME trying out the NEW SLIDE in the SNOW

And now it’s Christmas Day again. It doesn’t seem possible. “Are you sure you still want to…” started my husband.

“Yes,” I said firmly before he could finish. “I am.”

Besides, there wasn’t much to do. Mum had already bought the turkey and made the nut roast which was wrapped in foil inside the fridge. “Don’t forget the crackers,” she said. No need to ask where they were. She’d hidden them in the understairs cupboard so the grandchildren couldn’t find them – just as she’d done when the four of us were little.

The twins, now four, were entrusted with the task of laying the table along with their older cousins. Amy, as usual, was sitting on the sofa with husband number three, rifling through the Quality Street tin and picking out the purple ones. I’d like to warn her it’s not so easy to shift baby fat once she’s given birth.

“Don’t,” whispers Mum in my ear. “You’ll only start a row. You know how long it’s taken her to get this far.”

Beth, whose nose is still red and runny, is wrapped up in a rather fetching black and white pashmina which “a friend” had given her as an advance Christmas present. She won’t say who but she’s constantly texting which I’ve never seen her do before.

“I taught her,” announces my eldest nephew proudly.

And me? I’m laying the table which Mum and Dad bought years ago from a second-hand shop. The wood is chipped from our marks over the years but – and this is the crucial bit – it has an extendable sliding bit which comes out so we can all (just about) sit round it.

Naturally we all sit in the same places we had as children except that our partners (“such a modern word,” Dad would say) and little ones are squashed up next to us. When I get to Dad’s place, I hesitate. “Go on,” says Mum, nudging me. “We can always pretend. After all, it is Christmas.”

Even so, we all go a bit quiet when Meg sings out that it’s time to eat. It’s as if we are expecting a miracle to happen. But this is real life, I tell myself. I’m grown up now. It’s time to face the facts.

“When can we open our presents?” demand the twins. They still speak their sentences in one voice.

“You know perfectly well.” Amy rolls her eyes. “After lunch. It’s tradition.”

Personally, I can’t wait to see how she copes when her own baby starts answering back.

“Jo,” says Mum who’s always been able to read my thoughts. “That’s not very kind.”

Maybe she’s right. Perhaps I ought to… Then I jump. “Did you hear that?” I ask. But everyone is pulling their crackers which Mum bought, as she always does, in the January sales. There’s a shower of paper hats, plastic key rings and smutty jokes. No one else hears the door open.

I’m there before anyone else. “You’re back!” I run into Daddy’s arms. My nose is against his chest. I’m breathing his familiar smell. Tears are falling. Am I imagining this?

“I got leave from the oil rig,” he says, gently disentangling himself. “I explained to the boss that –”

“Grandad!” The children all hurtle themselves towards him. Amy lumbers out and there are exclamations of “I can’t believe how much you’ve grown!” Beth has actually abandoned her mobile and is pulling our father into the kitchen. I can hear Meg cry out in disbelief.

“You said you wouldn’t be back until spring,” she says, mopping her eyes with the special Christmas tea towel which only comes out at this time of the year.

“But you laid me a place,” he says, looking across at the table.

“Mum told me to,” I whisper. My husband puts an arm around me.

Of us all, Mum’s death in the autumn hit me hardest. I was the one who had taken her to her chemo appointments because the others had office jobs – Amy still doesn’t take my writing or “working from home” seriously.

I’m the one who still hears her voice in my head, although my kindly GP says that’s quite normal.

I also begged for us all to have Christmas together in the usual manner, even though neither of our parents were going to be there. Or so we’d thought.

“Mum’s still here in spirit,” says Beth, putting her arm around me. She looks at the others. “Come on. Group hug.’

So we do. I find myself next to Amy. Her eyes are moist. I suddenly realise that she’s the only one of us apart from Beth whose baby won’t know his or her grandmother.

I reach out and squeeze her hand. I’ve done this before in the past but this time, she doesn’t push me away.

Afterwards, we unwrap our presents. Mum had got them ready months ago. Amy had a new hair wand ( So you can return Jo’s to her). Meg had a voucher for a Spa weekend, because every woman needs atreat. Beth had a new pashmina. And I had a notebook to write down your thoughts. Will had the train set which Dad had bought years ago for the son who never arrived. And the twins had a dolls’ house to share: the same one we girls used to play with h when we were growing up.

“Your mother got me to dig them out before she died,” said Dad. “She wanted you to carry on the traditions. Talking of f that, who wants to pull the wishbone with me?” “Me, me,” wheedled Amy. Just then, there was a ring at the door r. We all stopped and looked at each other r. No. It couldn’t be.

“Granny!” call out the twins who still keep asking where she is. I go cold. Then n hot. Then cold again.

It can’t be. That sort of thing only happens in stories…

“Jo, darling!” A lovely warm voice envelops me. I breathe in her familiar smell. It’s not the one I’d yearned for, but welcome all the same.

“I hope you don’t mind.” My motherin-law throws an apologetic look at my husband. “It’s just that we really wanted to see the grandchildren on Christmas Day this year… So we thought we’d pay a surprise visit.”

“You’re very welcome,” says my father firmly. “Please. Come on in, get your coats off and take a seat.”

As I watch the twins playing with my husband’s parents, I hear my mother whisper in my ear. “Remember what I said at the end, Jo?” I do – even though I didn’t want to. “Life changes,” she’d said to me as she lay on her bed upstairs after discharging herself from hospital, because she wanted “to go” in her own room with her familiar things around her and her precious garden outside. “We can’t expect everything to stay the same. I may not be able to watch the children grow up. But they still have another set of grandparents.”

I close my eyes. I imagine that I am holding my mother, just as I did when she took her final breath. Then I allow her to float away.

“Please,” I say to my husband’s parents with a smile. “Do stay for tea. I’ve made Christmas cake. It was our mother’s recipe.”

“But you LAID ME A PLACE,” he says, LOOKING across at the TABLE