T’was the night before Christmas and Melly was a sad girl. This is my third Christmas on my own without my family, and every year it’s bothered me to wake up in a different time zone and imagine what’s happening back in the hometown. Snow, the Christmas tree my father takes a full day and then some to make perfect, the holiday frenzy my mother creates getting ready to make the day perfect. Usually on Christmas day I lend a big hand in cooking everything because living on my own I never get the chance to make that much food on that big a scale and I love cooking.
Things of late haven’t been going super well in Shanghai for Miss Mel. In fact, if we could look at it, not a heck of a lot has been going right at all. It’s almost like I was in the middle of a scrabble game and someone switched the pieces on me, but I am still trying to play with the old chips. It will get better; I just need to figure out the game again.
Feeling a little lonely and unloved, I decided that I would live Christmas like a troll. Stay in, wear my pajamas three days in a row, and reject text messages to join civilization for the holidays. Recluse. Unwrap my two presents and eat oranges and generally snivel my way through to Boxing Day.
My friend Christian was having none of it. “You’re coming to dinner Christmas Eve. We are booking a buffet at City Diner. You can’t stay home on Christmas Eve.” I could be a pain, say no, and face the wrath of Christian or I could just give in. I gave in.
A little after six, I arrived at the diner. And for a diner in Shanghai, they put on a pretty good Christmas spread. I recognized all sorts of traditional Christmas food that I knew were traditions in other people’s families but not my own. There was turkey and gravy and stuffing and mashed potatoes and creamed spinach and cranberry sauce and some other holiday stuff. For dessert there were massive ginger bread cookies shaped like boots and bells.
My dinner companions were Christian, my best friend in Shanghai, and his friends Mark and Jasmine, and Canadian Tim (as opposed to French Tim), Petra, a fellow yogini and a friend of hers Lilian. My international Christmas crowed hailed from Canada, Philippines, Austria, China and Australia. Six languages were spoken at the table: Chinese, Tagalog, German, Spanish, Bahasa and Shanghainese.
The diner didn’t do much for decoration. The food tables were decorated, and there was a little tree laden with all the cheap christmas decorations boasting,-well,- made in China stickers. From the screaming TV we witnessed a soccer game between two teams I didn’t recognize, WIG and CHE. CHE won. The crowd roar from the game competed with the two Christmas carols they played before the sound track switched into the Beach Boys for the rest of the evening. Surfin' USA, man!
After most of the visits to the buffet table were over, the table fell into two groups of conversations, and I participated lightly. I was in a quiet mood, and listened back and forth eavesdropping on the more interesting conversation. Eventually my eyes trailed over to a white haired man sitting at the next table. He was eating alone. Our eyes connected, smiles were exchanged.
I thought about whether or not to engage in conversation with him. I wasn’t really in the mood for talking, but something kept drawing my attention to him. And what sort of person would I be to ignore a fellow foreigner eating a dinner alone on Christmas Eve? A few minutes later I found myself chatting with Allan, an American artist living in Shanghai, with a painting studio very close to my yoga studio.
What we chatted about wasn’t important. We talked about life, and ideas, and inspiration. I listened to him talk mostly about his work and his reasons for being in Shanghai, and found that we had a lot in common. I have a background in Art History and Linguistics, Allan has a painting studio, writes curriculum and his business card introduces him as a creative coach. A creative coach! I never thought about such a thing. He told me he considers himself a solution in search of a problem.
I confided in him that I have been trying to get back into doing some creative things on my own- for an audience of someone who may not be a kindergarten student. Over the past nine years my drawing talents have been poured into quick sketches to convey my meaning to non English speakers. Keeping this blog has been one way of stepping out of that rut. I admitted, “Sometimes I have a blank piece of paper in front of me and I’m not sure what to do with it.” It’s an uneasy feeling for a person who supposedly thrives on creativity.
“Can I give you a free creative coaching lesson right now?” Allan leaned in to the table. I grabbed my sprite off the other table and said, “Go for it.” He gave me a few pieces of advice, but the one that came through the loudest for me was, “Don’t judge it. Stop judging yourself altogether. Other people are going to do enough of that for you anyway, even if they shouldn’t. If you wake up one morning and you go out with a pimple on your nose, you think everyone is staring at it, when in reality no one notices it. Don’t be so hard on your self. Finish everything you start even if you think its crap.”
As he spoke, I heard the words that have come out of several friends’ mouths as of late. But it took this perfect stranger to drive it home. I am my own worst critic, it’s true. I just never realised it was so obvious. My friend in Canada recently told me, “Lower your standards and WONDERFUL things can happen!” But not just in my creative life, but my social life, my professional life, my love life. I realized that in Allan I had found the key to get myself out of my Troll’s hovel. Time to move out and on and up.
We wished each other Merry Christmas, exchanged numbers made a date for a studio visit and further exchange of ideas and conversation, and he was off to a party. I returned to my group who were busy snapping happy Christmas photos. Soon I found myself staring at the tv as the conversations continued around me, contemplating all the things that had taken place that night, and of my chance meeting with Allan. I realized that my “act of charity” of going over there to keep someone company with a little conversation on Christmas Eve wasn’t my act at all but Allan’s. The person in need of that conversation was me.
My eyes were focused on the TV though my brain was somewhere else. All of a sudden, as I was brought out of my deep thoughts and back into reality, I realized I was watching WWF. How ridiculous. Beach Boys music blaring, WWF wrestling on the screen, the Chinese wait staff doing their best to get rid of us so they could flip the table for the next round of buffeters. (One waitress grabbed the plate out from under my gingerbread cookie-"we need to flip the table! Time to get out!!!!" She barked in a barely pronouncable English.) On TV A leather laden midget was biting the knee caps of his opponent, a oily tanned tank in stars-and-stripes pants and a bleached out Britney Spears ponytail. I lost my mind. I started to laugh. Then I couldn’t stop laughing. The midget was now pissed off and chasing the ref out of the building. It was too much for me. I was doubled over laughing to something no one could see at my vantage point or could see it and had no idea why I thought it was so funny. Merry Christmas, Midget! After a drink at another place around the corner we all went home early. I’m glad I exorcised the troll.
I chatted on the internet once I got home with my friend Shane, also alone for Christmas in Ottawa. I think he’d had his fill of Christmas parties though, claiming he could hear a little voice coming from his liver crying, “Why do you hate me so?” A friend from the past, recently reconnected. Sharing nice thoughts, good vibes, sincere wishes and hopes and a few dreams.
This morning I woke to a drunken text message sent to me by a young twenty-something Filippino drummer I chat occasionally with. He wrote, “Melanie, Just in case I die, I want you to know I care about you. Now I’ve said what I wanna say” Someone got into the Christmas sauce. I wrote back, “You are very cute! Text messages sent at 4 am are usually very honest! Let’s go for coffee sometime.” But I never got a reply. Poor guy is probably dying in hungover shame! But he shared the love, and that was enough to put a smile on my face.
I spent Christmas dinner with my good friend Amit, a Hindu from the Punjab, eating vegetarian pizza at Pizza Hut. We laughed and chatted and caught up over the few weeks we haven’t seen each other. He told me a week ago he went to eat in an Indian restaurant and by chance he met a fellow Punjabi who had lost his job in India and had come to Shanghai in search of work, but was down and out. Amit took the guy under his wing, gave him a couch to sleep on, a map of Shanghai and a list of all the Indian restaurants in town, and a shoulder to cry on. I’m so proud of Amit for doing that. For all the Christmas spirit floating around in Christmas balls and gift boxes, I found the purest form of it illustrated perfectly in my Hindu friend. He calls it Karma, but it's all the same thing at the end of the day.
So as Christmas winds to a close, I realize now that I may not always have what I want, but what I need is all around me. I have friends who care for me all over the world, a family who loves me and understands me, a healthy life and a bright future and enough money to take me where I need to go, and everything else the universe seems to provide. Merry Christmas!