At this time of year we’re always far away from at least some of our closest family spread between Australia, USA and currently New Zealand. I’ve long given up sending gifts in the mail for a cost that equals or even exceeds the cost of the gift itself, and instead arrange delivery from a vendor close to where the recipients live – call it supporting local businesses – theirs, not ours. As I write I’m nearing the end of Christmas shopping online for this year – a full 10 days ahead of my usual schedule!
The Christmas feeling received a boost the other day, though, when the oldies music station I was listening to played Eddie Rabbitt’s I Love A Rainy Night. That song always sends me back to Christmas 1980 which we spent with Sal and Rog at Las Cruces, early in the family’s fabulous trip in and around the southwest of USA, about which I’ll write another time. As we travelled around the sights that tune was on the car radio hundreds of times, which is the weird reason I associate it with the Christmas. I just had a another listen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG0e8_foDmU
The book club I’ve belonged to for many years has always had a Christmas luncheon, usually catered, and it’s always been at Victoria’s home. Along the back of the house a very wide verandah leads out from the living and dining rooms into her beautiful garden. It has always been so lovely to help ourselves buffet style and sit around the decorated tables sharing the delicious lunch with fellow members, some of whom always brought along a visitor or two, sometimes visitors were former members. I went through some of the photos I took on those days, and sadly in the many years I’ve belonged, more than a handful have passed away or had to withdraw on health grounds. With half the membership being temporary Uruguay residents from other countries, those women have moved along, and I had difficulty remembering some of their names. They were (and hopefully still are) keen readers, great company and caring people I value having known.
Here in Uruguay the pandemic situation has worsened recently, and some venues are again closed, activities sidelined and we’re all urged to stay at home if at all possible. We’re not in lockdown, yet anyway, but various government announcements make it clear that organisers and attendees of any kinds of events will be prosecuted if new cases are traced to them. So, in view of the pandemic, we’ve cancelled plans for what was to have been our well planned catered, socially distanced lunch out on Victoria’s back lawn. Instead we’ll be having our end of year lunch on Zoom. Lunch goodies will be delivered to us that morning and we’ll dress up and gather on screen later to eat it and toast each other for the coming year. I must make sure there’s some chilled white wine around…
We suspended our fortnightly meetings just before the start of the pandemic here, feeling we should wait and and see if the virus that was causing concern would turn up. Of course it did. A few days later the first cases were announced and within a week the whole country was in effect shut down for a while. Members have since exchanged their books by appointment with tMaureen who has the 300+ books at her house, and we’ve all been linked by WhatsApp and occasional individual meet ups. No one’s ever got round to organising meetings for us all over Skype or Zoom. Being such a huge step from how our gatherings had been since time immemorial, I just didn’t give that possibility a thought, partly because most of the reading I’ve done has been audio books while I’ve been stitching. But with this change in plan, I suggested we should try it, as we’ve all been experiencing Zoom in our own lives for a while now. The plan is to meet monthly starting in January, which might even lead to more book discussion group type meetings, which would be extra welcome.