Ghosts of Christmas past

For some reason I was thinking about my cousin and myself as little kids.  We were both watched a lot by my Nonna while our parents worked.  My Nonna has two kitchens.  One upstairs kitchen where everything is spotless, one downstairs, where still everything is spotless, but it does not have to stay this way.  This is the one she cooks in.  She also has a living room with her couch in the clear plastic slip covers  She DUSTS her couch.  

   There are two doors in my Nonna's house.  The front door which leads to a large foyer, opening to her plastic couched living room and french doors with open to her beautiful kitchen.  Then there is the side door which leads to the kitchen of good smells, and her sunken "den", and two rooms.  Growing up A and I spent many times napping on the den couch, playing, juice got spilled, crumbs dropped.  We lived in the den and second (which is really the only) kitchen.  When family would come over we spent time in the den.  Every Christmas that plastic would come off the couch and for one very tense evening Nonna's couch lived life on the wild side.  Bareback furniture.

Anyway, because A and I were about 4 and 5 and so used to fooling around at Nonna's we did not really grasp the impact of being allowed in the front door.  It felt like forever, but was probably only an hours of us getting told to "settle down" or "sit still" when finally Nonna said she would go down and put on a movie for us. My cousin got "Spice World" for Christmas, I can't remember what I wanted to watch, but we were arguing.      

     We ended up shoving each other and went right into the french doors guarding the "Good Kitchen".  As my mother stood up an entire glass of red wine down a cream coloured sofa with embroidered roses.  My cousin had a split lip and the back of my head managed to break the glass, yet it remained intact, with the perfect curved indent of the back of my head in the thick glass.  Surprisingly I was unhurt, but later as we sat watching "Spice World", A with a dishcloth full of ice pressed to her lip and a smirk that she got her choice of movie at the cost of a little blood we heard my Nonna directed the cleaning of the couch while assuring my mother it was fine, and that she probably had too much to drink.  My father arguing that it had more to do with two children going through a glass door.  

   The couch was never the same, and they had to get a new one.  All of which Nonna assured my mother was no big deal.  But every Christmas she mentions Jamie's head indented in the glass and the sofa.  "I loved that sofa."