The Christmas train

On longings and belongings

The coffee is awful, burnt and bitter, but the young boys who help me with my bags are a tonic, and there is a sense of conviviality in the air, as if we aren’t in parallel lives travelling to disparate places. I share some leftover mince pies with the folk at my table, and we chat about random things. Normally I don’t like talking to strangers on trains, but it’s different in December.

The countryside whooshes by in a blur of homes, memories, skies and possibility. There is something about leaning your head against the window of a moving train that transports you from here to everywhere - back into the deep reaches of the past when you ran these rails as a teenager returning home from uni, as a twenty-something packed in around bags full of presents you bought with money you were proud to have earned, as a thirty-something with a baby on your lap thinking you should have stayed home, early forties on a special trip to see a show with little ones in tow, and now not too far from fifty, with loss and longings bundled into the folds of your winter scarf.

Someone’s phone goes off with the ring tone of a temple bell and you remember how once upon a time a Japanese poet named Matsuo Basho wrote a haiku* which went,

Even in Kyoto, on hearing the cuckoo’s cry, I long for Kyoto.

It perfectly sums up the romanticism and nostalgia I feel about the festive season.

Even at Christmas, on peeling a clementine, I long for Christmas.

Some days (most days) I worry about the world. The wars, the divisiveness, the uncertainty, the loneliness and suffering everywhere. Some days (most days) I marvel at the world. The beauty, the generosity, the kindness, the magic and miracles everywhere. At Christmas I feel it all, flavours of life mingling like the spices of a good mulled wine as it bubbles on the stove. Today is no different.

The Christmas train enters a tunnel and I see my 2023 face reflected, each laughter line and shadow a verse of life’s poetry etched on by the months, the weeks, the moments.

The Christmas train is running six minutes late. Not bad, all things considered. It’s kind of how I feel about this year to be honest. Like I have constantly been running six minutes late, but that’s not bad, all things considered.

I have just come from decorating my mum’s memorial bench with starry fairy lights. It’s in her favourite park, and we took tea and cake, and mince pies, and the dog, and remembered the time she did a funny dance at a picnic across the way. It was simple and complicated, devastating and lovely.

Earlier today at a particularly poignant moment, my phone started ringing in my handbag. I took it out and realized it was Facetiming her phone. It did that once before, a few weeks ago, when we were decorating the tree, and talking about her. It started ringing in my pocket, and it was calling her even though her phone has been off since she died eight months ago. To Facetime her on my phone, you have to unlock it, click on the app and scroll down to M for Mum. So how is that possible, twice, at such times?

Last week, when I was writing the Acknowledgements of my next book, I finished the final paragraph (about her), and looked up from my computer to see the most enormous rainbow I have ever seen reaching across the hills. It hadn’t even been raining, as far as I had noticed.

When you think about all these things we think (hope) are signs – the rainbows and the robins, the white feathers and the butt dialling – things that are so unbelievably strange in their timing that they simply cannot be one coincidence after another, it makes me wonder about what a human being really is, where we begin and end, and how utterly mesmerizing this world can be.

On the train a guy carrying an enormous Christmas present wrapped up with a gold ribbon knocks my arm as I type. He is apologetic, and I smile, and ask who it’s for. ‘Pickle’ he says. ‘Oh,’ says the woman across the aisle. ‘Pickle was the name of my dog.’ And then the person to her right puts a hand on her arm in consolation, like someone who has also lost a dog.

And I think about the fifty or so people in this train carriage, each with their invisible web of connections to other humans across this country and across the world, and back in time to ancestors and forward to descendants not yet imagined, and I wonder again at how strange and wonderful this being human really is, connected as we are to each other and everything all around us.

A friendly voice comes over the tannoy. We have caught up the six minutes, it says. We should arrive on time. And I wonder about my year, and whether, by New Year’s Eve, I too will arrive on time. Perhaps we are always on time, it’s just that our expectations of ourselves make us believe otherwise.

With this in mind I look around me and silently wish a merry Christmas to everyone on the Christmas train.

My wish for you is that you sense the quiet and subtle beauty of the season beneath the chaos and the noise, that you can soak in the festive sparkle and magic, inhale the bittersweetness of another year coming to an end, light a candle in the face of any darkness, and focus on all the blessings in your life.

Remember, all of life is a story. Myths and legends. Folklore and fairy tales. Imagination and memory. Diaries and dinner dates. Catch-ups over a pint and family chats around the kitchen table. Fact and fiction. Hope and expectation. Truth and dream. Each detail a sentence, each conversation a page. These are the days of our lives, my friend. Live them fully. Write them well.

Beth Xx

*This haiku can be found in Basho: The Complete Haiku translated by Jane Reichhold.

PS I have a little Christmas gift for you:

Episode 8 of the Calm Christmas Podcast is now available on Apple, Spotify and at bethkempton.com/podcast. The perfect way to welcome Christmas Eve.

Have a lovely Christmas friends,
Beth Xx

Images: Holly Bobbins + Unsplash