Flowers of Winter

Pavlova, covered in strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. Roo had been asked to prepare a dessert for Christmas lunch. She sat around her parents dining room table and ate her pavlova as she listened to the chatter around her. Her mother waited a whole year to celebrate Christmas, her home decked out in everything and anything Christmas. She was surrounded by family but her heart ached. She wasn’t sure why. She smiled sweetly and hugged her aunts and cousins, their bright, joyful faces couldn’t adjust her pretend smile into a true one.

She listened to her aunt nag about her ex husband, spitting her words like rocks.

“He flaunts that new girlfriend of his around like an expensive car, purposely stoping in front of my shop to show her off”

Another aunt whimpered about her plummeting money problems, the same one that wore a six hundred dollar dress and two hundred dollar necklace.

“it’s absolutely ridiculous, the bills keep coming in but the money doesn’t. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, live like a rat? How does the government expect us to live comfortably with such expensive bills?”

She listened to her uncle’s terrible jokes,

“What do elf’s learn at school? The elf-abet”

And her grandmother trying to teach her youngest sister table etiquette.
“Keep those elbows off the table and do not eat before the host”

The voices were a stampede in her head. Too many voice but none were Ruskin’s. He was celebrating Christmas with his family but Roo wished he was with her to save her from her own.