Why I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

I KNOW IT will snow this year. Perhaps it is snowing already; it will come from the sky, from out of the clouds on a dark evening, when farmers in Leitrim are leaning into the wind, with fodder on their backs for cattle in waterlogged fields.

It will snow when the woodcutter takes a chainsaw and ladder to the tip of the last tree in the forest, on Christmas Eve, as his children wait on the roadside shouting, “Daddy Daddy! Don’t let it fall out on the road; there’s a car coming.” It will snow when women are about to turn the ignition in their cars, and head home after a night of fizzy waters and orange juices, in the pub, with husbands as useless as mules.

And when they are about to lie down at night, and they peep out through the curtains to make sure the outside light in the yard is off, it will snow, and they will see it, magical and wonderful, and they will be tempted to wake the children, with excited whispers, saying, “Look out the window; it’s snowing!” At least that is what I dream of; and my daughter says, “Daddy, you say it every year, but it never does actually snow”. And I say nothing, because she would not yet understand that I need something to believe in.

Now that there is no more holy communion, and the crib gathers dust in the attic, and the clergy talk endless gobbledegook, I am stranded in a miserable rain, in a flooded field, in a wet and indifferent Christmas tide, and my last remaining hope is in the possibility of snow.

Inside the door of the shopping mall a group of teenagers, in Santa hats, were murdering Silent Night, and a man sat outside the ladies' toilet, with a child in a buggy. There was an office party in a nearby bar, and a young woman emerged and noticed the man waiting with the buggy.

“Will you come in and have a drink?” she asked.

“No,” the man said, “I’m just waiting for the wife; she’s still in the toilet.” Beside the buggy was a big red box that contained a 21-inch LCD screen, or so the box proclaimed. The child in the buggy slept. The man waited, staring at the box, like he too was a child, waiting for Christmas morning.

I asked him did he think it would snow. He grimaced, and said, “Not a chance”. On the street outside, a man was having an argument with a parking meter. I explained that parking was free until two o’clock. “But if you put in some euros now, you can buy the time from two until four,” I suggested.

He was impressed by such intelligence in a machine. I asked him did he think it would snow.

“My friend,” he declared, “I couldn’t care a monkey’s uncle what the weather does, because, come Sunday morning, I’m off to Alicante.”

A Romanian woman in a long purple dress asked me for money. I placed €2 in her plastic cup.

Then she said, “Please. Coffee”. She wanted me to take back the money and go into Subway and buy her a hot drink.

“They not like me to go inside shop,” she said.

I left the €2 in her cup and went to the shop and got her the coffee.

“What is your name?” she asked, when I returned.

I told her, and then enquired for her name, which she gave me, although I forgot it immediately.

A green headscarf covered her black hair and she pushed her face close to mine, with the ease and brass of a skilled beggar. Her eyes were brown, and her skin, as smooth as almonds, and her lips were a foggy blue, and as moist as a sloe.

In the distance, a waltz was playing; beneath the arch to the car park a portly gent in a brown leather jacket, with oily black hair, sallow skin, a wart on his nose, and a big grey moustache, played an accordion.

“Are you with him?” I wondered.

“My father,” she said.

I asked her did she think it would snow.

“Of course it will snow,” she said, confident and happy.

“Maria! Maria!” her father called out, eyeing the coffee.

She placed her hand on her breast and said, “In my country it always snows”.

mharding@irishtimes.com