At this time of year, I think of my parents, in years gone by, rushing around, my father in his office until the morning of Christmas Eve, my mother moving between her family home in Monaghan and our house in the country, sorting out the finer details of the great day. On Christmas Eve, all the precious things were pulled down out of cupboards and sideboards, and she would create such a beautiful table – as I now like to do – the memory has ever since been imprinted on my mind.

This Christmas will be quieter for many. Many relatives are unable to travel thanks to our new way of living and to some extent this will be a digitised festive season, with lots of mad, hilarious and emotional online greeting and sharing from one side of the planet to the other. Christmas for me, my husband and daughter, will mean a return to the family home in Monaghan to join my mother for a few days. No longer able to travel, she has a full-time helper, but remains in feisty spirit despite impediments, and will surely imbibe a few flutes of champagne on Christmas morning. At some point during the afternoon, we’ll call my sister in northern California, where she has survived not alone a year of Covid restrictions but the circle of hell that the uncontrolled forest fires brought to her area this year.

Later, we’ll sit at the table where our mother once made bread in a drift of bran and oats and buttermilk spatters, before a pure white linen cloth inherited from my grandmother Molly, using the old silver cutlery and 1950s Waterford crystal wine goblets, wedding gifts to my parents in the hazy, nostalgia-laden mid-20th century. We will follow my mother’s tradition and listen to the Queen’s speech at three o’clock! Above all though, as the four of us sit together, we’ll be damn glad to have survived so far.

It’s been a year of looping anxiety for many people, of incredible tension, self-doubt, and occasional brief surges of relief as when, for example, we were once again released to mingle a little. But this Christmas I’m entering the mid-winter celebrations in search of something else, something to keep me going. Because at times I’ve been afraid. Very afraid. There’s a vaccine in sight, but right now there’s only our inventive selves, rediscovering internal strands of tenacity, perspicacity and hope.

I’ve accepted that for the foreseeable future, I’m staying in Ireland. I will come to tolerate a swim in freezing sea or heart-stopping lake, will hike, cycle and “forest bathe”. In other words, whatever it takes. Ever since the choir I was a part of has been temporarily disbanded, I’ve also taken to singing out loud when I’m in the local forest. Again, a case of whatever it takes to keep those chakras spinning and energies on the rise. Midwinter is marked by the possibility of turnaround and continuity, and all cosmic patterns remind me yet again of my own creaturely nature. How many times have I looked out on a winter morning at the late sun rising, and enjoyed that light?

The light penetrates the crevices of my unconsciousness as it falls on my cool skin, and gives me hope. I’m alive, and I’m a creature of nature. And I ask myself daily, how great is that?

But there’s this other thing I’m grateful for: my sense of survival, and the delight of being close to my small family. There’ll still be ripping and tearing at gifts, plenty of laughter, wine, and a place laid at the table to represent absent loved ones. But then, we do always that, and with or without the enterprising virus that loves our lungs so much, there’s always space to remember the ones who can’t make it in person to that lovely, bedecked table.

Mary O’Donnell’s latest collection of poetry, Massacre of the Birds, is available from www.salmonpoetry.com or your local bookshop.

Main featured image: Gerhard Munthe, 1909