The Night Before The Night Before

Ron Sexsmith, she knows, sings just the right song. Aptly-titled, hopelessly sanguine “Maybe This Christmas”. The tune is like a mantra in her head all evening, a Mobius strip of sound charged with hurdy-gurdy longing.

“Maybe this Christmas will mean something more,
Maybe this year, love will appear,
Deeper than ever before…”

It’s just a song.

Just one of the many entreaties to a neon effigy; a tune that provides psychological comfort, but doesn’t change the way things usually turn out.

Like last Christmas, which was spent wandering the freezing streets in the rain, hardly enough money in her pocket to buy a plastic bowl of powdered soup to keep her fingers warm. Or like the Christmas two years before when she retreated into the bedroom while the family fought and the little potted plant her brother had optimistically trimmed with tinsel and cotton was yanked from its young, soft roots and shoved in the trash.

And then there was that time she curled up against the bedroom wall, too tired to sleep, too lonely to stay awake while her friends sang carols and ate fruit cake in the house next door.


While for most part the year seemed to flow by happily, at Christmas when love, more than anything, is supposed to hold court, her life seems to fall apart instead.

Maybe this Christmas.

Probably not.