Christmas Eves that linger

I’ve been fortunate to experience many Christmas Eves these past few years, each one feeling like a variation on a theme. Different faces, shifting places, yet always underscored by the same persistent nostalgia. The cast of characters shift, the settings change, and the air retains the same scent of nostalgia. Sometimes sweet and heady, other times sharp, almost acrid. Strange how the same moment, recycled through years, can carry the weight of so many lives.

I think back to one particular Christmas Eve, spent with my counselling classmates. We gathered for a quiet dinner, one that felt more like a retreat than a celebration. She outdid herself as always: a golden turkey surrounded by vibrant steamed vegetables, a decorated table with layers of white silk and shades of warm candle yellow, a table brimming with warmth. There were four of us, each with our own take on the profession, our own dreams to embark.

Conversations took turns, one by one the dreams we unpacked so carefully, as though they were fragile bowls of ever growing, ever shaping light. Dreams of helping people, of guiding the lost, of becoming more than we were. We spoke of the lives we wanted to support, the wounds we hoped to heal from our own tragedy. That night at Ridley Park, a group of students turned into counsellors, shimmering like candles on a dark night, making our way to a new career and identity.

Another Christmas Eve returns, wrapped in the embrace of a relationship and someone else’s family. Back then the only relationship I was fortunate to experience. There was wine spread across the house, laughter that carried happiness, and the easy familiarity of people who knew each other well enough not to ask why I was there. I remember feeling so comfortable among them. I remember his mother’s face, alight with a joy I had rarely seen at my own family gatherings, the kind of joy born not of perfection, but of simple togetherness.

And he was there, looking so beautiful sitting beside me, with his cool fluffy hair and his charismatic smile, the clothes that seemed to come from a rare form of silk and tapestry. He was watching me as I shuffled cards and spoke of my studies. Between us was a bottle of wine, two years of being together, warm and ruby-red, seemingly steady and calm.

I should have told him more. How lucky I felt to love someone so brilliant and magnetic, how deeply I admired his mind, his craft, his way of gathering laughter from those enchanted by him. I never understood why I was the only one there watching the award ceremony. And now those words only linger in between all that ending. For a fleeting moment, everything felt so right. But I can see how the silence between us made everything sink. These terrifying weights; words unsaid gathering in the spaces where love once lived. Right there in that beautiful, beautiful house at Lorong Chuan.

And now, here I am again, another Christmas Eve. The day began early, stirring me awake before dawn with thoughts too restless to ignore, too much about my grandfather’s gallery. By five in the morning, the world was still cloaked in darkness, though the birds had begun their morning sonnets, tentative and soft in tone. After dropping my partner at the MRT station, I treated myself to breakfast and spent the morning pouring over a manuscript, even after my own submission had recently been declined. I suppose this is their version of a second chance. The afternoon slipped by at home, the rain coming and going, at times gentle, at times imposing. When it finally cleared, I made my way to Robinson Road, retracing the steps of a younger self who once walked those streets daily, chasing paychecks and coming back with credit card bills. My legs knew where to go, muscle memory was still there, lingering like an old dance.

Now it’s quarter past seven in the evening, and I’m waiting for my partner near Lau Pa Sat. Dinner awaits us before we head to The Fullerton, where two of his friends will sing carols in a choir. As I write this, a melody floats by. A woman’s voice, full of longing, coarse and smoky, recounting all she gave for someone who is no longer there. I sit here alone. Perfectly alone, perfectly happy.

And the both of us will make our way to dinner and walk to the hotel, wondering about how the day flies so fast, even with so little occasion. And once we arrive at the hotel we will watch the beautiful choir performing beautifully. This will be our second visit, just one more shy of a tradition we might make for a live we’ll try our best to build for each other.

It strikes me how little has happened today or on all those Christmas Eves I’ve recounted. There was nothing monumental. And yet, each one stayed with me, even if it reads like a mosaic or a broken puzzle. I can remember them, write about them, and somehow, in the act of remembering, I find some way to piece them together, putting words and giving it permission for a second life. Nothing happened. And yet still, I am grateful. For the way time lulls and slowly passes through, for the rain when it falls slowly through the country and leaves its mark, for these moments of nothing that give life such stories to tell.

Merry Christmas everyone. May the mundane become your everlasting peace and joy. For it’s become mine now.