F ³: Christmas Present and Imperfect

If today goes the way I hope it will, a brand new water heater will come into our lives and we will once again have hot water. This was the Christmas adventure none of us were counting on this year. We managed to enjoy The Big Day without it but cravings for a hot bath are beginning to overtake all my conscious and unconscious thoughts.

Of course, it’s a good reminder that plenty of folks spend this time of year without adequate food, shelter, and numerous other resources. We will most likely soon be back to our usual creature comforts so these days pose not a whole lot more than temporary inconvenience.

Some days I am not so great at coping with temporary inconvenience.

But, overall, we are getting by. A casual Christmas dinner can be served on paper plates and hand sanitizer is a great backup for handwashing if cold water and soap doesn’t inspire confidence. One can boil water to wash small quantities of items if absolutely necessary.

When we look back on the Christmas of 2024 will the absence of hot water still figure large in our memories? Or will the joy and general hilarity of our family being altogether far outshine it? Our grown children bringing along their significant others, my mother-in-law bringing Christmas crackers to share, my husband getting out the music tech toys and doing wild demonstrations, the monumentally impressive cheese platter that threatened to eclipse the entire rest of the meal…(it was, as the kids say, “epic”)

Some years ago, when we accidentally ordered the wrong sized couch from IKEA and it was too large for our living room, our youngest said, “Some day we’ll look back on this and laugh.” At that particular moment we were not ready to laugh.

We did get there eventually.

And so we will with the Christmas without a water heater. We are lucky that we have the resources to replace it and our woes will soon be mended. And it will become a story of Christmases past.

Do you have any stories like that? I’d love to hear them.

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