Jingle Bells Under the Window

 "seveneightnineten, ready or not, here I come!"

I hold my breath, crouched behind the day curtains in the dining room. Beside me are my father's amplifiers and laptop bags stacked up and tucked into the alcove beneath the window. I hear Theo's footsteps patter-smatter into the kitchen. She doesn't see me anywhere and runs back into the living room. I'm certain the dark lump of my silhouette can be seen through the curtains, but I stay still enough to resemble amplifiers. 

Something hurts from holding my position, so I shift my weight and look around. The alcove is peach-coloured where they ran out of white paint from repainting the room. On the bottom of the window grille there are numbers scrawled roughly by the construction workers in marker ink. The last time I saw these numbers, I was probably also playing hide-and-seek.

Theo's footsteps are still pattering around the house wildly. I'm safe here. My father is playing Jingle Bells on the piano, figuring out chords and progressions as he goes along. I stay still in this moment, closing my eyes to remember it, me hiding and listening to him play. 

I will be thirty-seven years old at the end of this year. I have the beginning of marionette lines and white hairs to cover. I'm back at my parents' house on a Sunday because my one-year-old is too active for me to bring to youth service anymore. I've had career dreams that ran past their expiry date and are now shrivelled up; I don't have dreams anymore. I have a three-room flat but yearn for more space for laundry and storage. I choose reality dating shows over art films every night. I don't exercise anymore because dragging two kids around makes my hips ache. My six-year-old was diagnosed with autism this year. 

I'm old enough, disappointed enough, to know that Jingle Bells under the window is a gift. An extra bit of time from my childhood that God wrapped up and left behind these curtains for me to discover all these years later. I am nine years old again in that late afternoon spot of time before Christmas guests arrive, when all the food is cooked and the table already set, and my father plays the piano. I am here, I am here, and in this moment, I am completely happy.

"Try the dining room, somewhere in the curtains," he says, still playing. Even without turning around to see, he knows where I am. There are giggles and shrieks, and --poof--the curtain is pulled open and my two daughters cackle and stumble into me.