It’s dark outside. Winter dark. Cold, too. But, inside, all wrapped up in a thick duvet, you’re roastie toastie. There’s a little sniffle, hinting something’s brewing – but isn’t that all part of the season? Nothing says Christmas like a red nose.
Your WhatsApp group ‘Gay Family’ – tells you ‘Party at Santa’s Grotto Christmas Night 8 til Late’. It will be the usual mayhem. The last couple of years you’ve had neither the desire, nor the energy – up with the twins before the dawn’s even cracked.
On the bedside table, unwrapped, books from Jo. She knows you well. A new edition of a James Baldwin classic, what a find, and the Mariah Carey autobiography you started last night. You laugh at the mix you’d have hidden years ago. It’s not the only thing you kept hidden. There are some benefits to getting older – embracing your contradictions is one, accepting yourself is another.
You try to remember when opening a present on Christmas Eve became a thing – certainly didn’t come from your parents. You settle on Jo hearing about an Icelandic tradition where they give books on the Eve and read together. You think she heard that one on her scholarship year in the States. Every year she tells you a Christmas-themed fact from around the world.
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You consider your journal, next to the lamp: leather bound with a long strap that wraps round, giving the illusion of privacy. Not that it matters – it’s been a long time since anyone’s shared your bedroom and, besides, all you use the journal for is to write your daily gratitudes. A friend gave it to you – told you how a counsellor advised them to write letters to their younger self – it’s healing, apparently. You tried, once, but if felt like picking a scab, and you know what Mum said about that: “causes scars”.
You spend, or have spent, every Christmas with Jo and the twins since her divorce. You’ve become like a new little family. It’s the highlight of your year – sleeping over – Baileys and books – waking up to see the boys open their presents. Not this year.
You’ve barely met this new man and Jo’s been so busy since returning to work. And before, during the pandemic, so-called bubbles brought Jo and her twins so close, so quickly.
You weren’t in their bubble. You’re still going for Christmas dinner, though.
Outside has brightened a little, so you wiggle out of your cocoon.
“OK, play Mark’s Christmas Songs,” you call to the black oblong on the corner shelf. The sound of bells jingling, then a deep, shivery voice trembles right into your heart.
Spuds on, roasting in goose fat – you’d parboiled them last night. Not to over-egg-the-figgy-pudding, but, they are the most important ingredient of a Christmas dinner and you’re going to smash them, so to speak. At least you were left with something to do.
A little singalong and a dance around the kitchen because you love Christmas. The songs and carols. Tinsel and decorations, cards and pressies. Wrapping paper and bows. One year, you did brown paper packages tied up with string and made the twins watch The Sound of Music.
You love turkey, gravy, roast potatoes and sprouts. Love crackers with bad jokes, napping with a stuffed belly in front of the telly. You love it all and refuse to have it robbed from your glittery-Christmas-card-writing fingers by Grinches or bah-humbugers.
Mum loved Christmas too. You remember the December you and Jo went searching for, and found, the presents your parents had hidden. On Christmas morning, you showed genuine surprise. Jo, however, gave herself away – it was written all over her face – and she has never understood how you were able to make yourself forget. It’s your superpower, she says.
Driving to Jo’s, you’re running a little late, so you take the shortcut past your parents’ old house. You usually avoid this route. A door to the past creaks open and stale memories rush to escape. You see mourners crowded on the driveway, you and Jo at the front carrying a coffin, and, only a few weeks later, another, from the front door. There’s a price for loving that long. That hard. That exclusively.
You’ve always struggled with relationships. Some of your London friends would say you were trying to follow the norm – that, being gay, you were free to set your own rules for what a relationship looked like. But you wanted what your parents had. Maybe playing with different rules from those whom you wanted love from was part of your problem. Being ‘too much’ was what you were always told when you were growing up, this is what made you ‘gay’ to people. And then in London, you found your tribe, where you did finally fit in, but, ironically, you were still ‘too much’ – in the way you loved – you gave too much and asked for too much in return.
What are you supposed to do with all that love?
Opening the door, you hear the kids scream “Uncle Mark!” from the livingroom, then feet slap on the parquet hallway. Two boys, identical, apart from one in red football kit, the other in blue. They’d sniffed out your pretend interest in football many moons ago. Intuitive little buggers, kids are.
Many arms warp around your waist, faces burrow into your soft trunk.
“Hello there – my little elves,” you say, pulling on an ear each, while they “ouch” with laughter.
“Where’s our presents?” Shane asks.
“Don’t be so cheeky!” Jo comes out of the kitchen drying her hands on a tea cloth, looking tired and over-it-already.
“Oh no, I forgot,” you say.
Faces fall, before – “Only joking!” – and they laugh on cue. “Two sacks with your names on – the boot’s open.”
“Shoes!” Jo shouts – sending them to stamp their feet into wellies at the door. Half-on, they crunch over the gravel, pushing each other out of the way.
“Hello, darling,” Jo says, turning a cheek for a kiss. She smells of brandy – cooking or drinking? – you’re not quite sure.
“Where’s the roasties?” she asks and it’s your face that drops before you remember the tray on the passenger seat. Old dogs and new tricks – it will take a few goes at this other new normal.
You sit where you are told, at the breakfast bar.
Ant hands you a flute of bubbles. “It’s not Christmas until there’s a champagne salute,” he says.
Is that right? you think.
“To Christmas,” Ant toasts and the three of you clink with the briefest of eye contact.
Jo knows bubbles give you heartburn, but you smile and sip.
Your place at the stove is taken. You didn’t even get to put your roasties in the oven to reheat. You watch the happy couple. Instead of the teamwork you once shared with Jo, she now follows orders. But, you reluctantly have to admit, she appears to love it. Who knew? She looks at you like “haven’t I struck gold?”
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You hear the boys in the livingroom and realise you’d become so wrapped up with the show that you’d missed the twins opening their presents, and you feel a heaviness above your eyes.
“Why don’t you take the boys for a kick-about?” Jo asks Ant. They exchange a look.
“Sure.” Ant holds her hips, pulling her in for a slow kiss. It isn’t passionate, as such, it’s ... love. Real love. So innate you have to look away. It causes a shiver of sadness but you are indescribably happy for her. And a little jealous. That’s a mix to process.
“Oh, I’ve got one for you,” she calls over her shoulder to me as she closes the door behind the footballers. “My friend Laura, who lives in Mallorca, told me that in her little town, it never snows, except in the mountains, so at Christmas the farmers bring truckloads of the stuff to the town square for the kids. They play with it until every last bit has melted.”
“I love that,” you say, smiling, while you look at the floor like you are there, thousands of miles away.
“Don’t tell Ant,” Jo says as she leans on your shoulder, “but the boys really missed you last night. Christmas Eve wasn’t the same without you.” She smiles. And you do too because she knew it was all you needed to hear and at that moment you couldn’t love her any more.
While Jo and Ant wash up, you and the boys watch Elf, without the grown-ups, and you like this new alone-time with them. You leave straight after though because you don’t like driving in the dark.
As you pull away, they wave from the porch, like a perfect family. And you feel your heart held in a hand that’s squeezing too tightly. Those boys had been yours for a while and now they’re someone else’s.
A reality presents itself. A forgotten life. A trick age plays – you chose a path and the others grow over, until they’ve disappeared. The lives we choose – and the ones we are given.
You had always wanted a kid.
Yes. All through your twenties. And thirties. Back then it was practically unheard of for a gay man to raise a child. You had always wanted to get married too. Now that you can, you’re too old, too set in your ways. Too tired and too selfish, if honest.
You’re still thinking about your child when you reach home. Still, when you lie down for what has become your daily nap. You wonder if you’ll remember this whole other life when you wake up, or forget again.
You jolt upright, grab your journal, unwrap the long leather tie and take the pen that’s clipped on to the cover. You find an empty page and write a letter, not to you as a child, as your friend’s therapist had suggested, but to the child you never had.
You write ...
Dear ...
I never gave you a name.
To be honest, I always leant towards a boy. I’d have worried if you’d been a girl – scared I couldn’t protect you. Look how the world is stacked against girls. Look how your Auntie Jo has to fight. Though I’ve always felt an affinity with women, a short hand. And, by far, they have accepted me more. But something happens to my body when I say the word “son”, like a tuning fork hitting the perfect note.
As a baby, I’d have smothered you with kisses. I can remember with your cousins – James and Shane – one kiss on the forehead led to me giving a hundred more.
You’d have been a talker, no doubt – you come from a long line of storytellers. And you’d have loved books. I’d have read to you every night until you drifted off. We’d have listened to books on long journeys in the car too.
Music will take a whole letter on its own.
I wanted to tell you so many things ... God, where do I start?
Well ...
Be honest and true.
Make yourself vulnerable and see how people match it.
Take a chance on the world. Risk it all.
And when people lie or hurt you, don’t let it close you up or give up trying. Don’t end up a lonely old fool like your dad.
Help those who need it.
Be kind.
Give and give and when you think you’ve given everything, dig deeper, and give what’s there too.
Being alive has an impact on the planet – try to cause the least damage you possibly can – to it and the people on it.
Say “yes” to every opportunity, first. Then learn to say “no” when needed.
Ask questions and really listen to the answers. Don’t go to sleep on an argument. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t hold grudges. Forgive easy, forgive often, forgive everyone – forgive so much that one day you might be able to forgive yourself.
This is going to sound sentimental, and probably, a little bit daft, but, I really wanted to teach you how to tie your laces. Ridiculous, I know. But I can see it. Me showing you in your trainers by the football pitch. In your new, tight, black school shoes, too. You, frustrated, it would have taken so many tries. Then the day you got there, all on your own. I would have cried. I would have been so proud.
Maybe having you would have solved me. Finally finding something to do with all that love. Are you why I was given so much?
Most likely, I would have been too much for you too – and it would’ve been the most selfish thing I could have done – having you to fulfil me.
I hope you can forgive me for not giving you life. I hope that you will come to understand in the course of these letters that, in fact, denying myself you was my greatest act of love.
I love you,
Dad
A beeping phone: Group Chat: ‘Don’t forget – BYO – And Come to Sleigh and Sashay Away’.
John sends you a private message ‘MARK YOU ARE CUMMING lol – No Excuses!’
‘Too old,’ you reply.
‘Come on, you can be our Daddy Christmas!’ pings back.
You laugh. It’s always such a ball on Christmas night – no one could accuse your Gay Family of not knowing how to party. You place your journal on top of Mariah Carey’s confessions.
In the taxi, you’ve a Santa’s hat and a T-shirt that reads Santa’s Little Melter.
“You getting your head showered from the wife and kids the night?” says the taxi man to the reflection in his rear-view mirror.
You pause – to be or not to be, gay? Coming out is a daily event – sometimes multiple times a day – and it’s tiring. You decide to save your energy for the night ahead.
“I’m single,” you say. “But who knows after tonight.”
“Yeoo, big man!” The driver laughs at you and you right back at him.
Daddy Christmas will be featured in McVeigh’s collection of BBC-commissioned short stories, I Hear You, which will be published in March 2025.
