My Christmas Shopping Day in Wandering Bullet Points

• First things first. I get up when it's dark, make my coffee, and sit on my porch with a shawl on. It's a wee bit nippy, not too much, but enough to make my fingers the tiniest bit stiff while I'm typing. If I try to work inside, though, I feel like I'm drowning in cotton wool. My brain seems to work best outside, these days. It's the first day in a long time that I'm climbing over the wall I hit, to write, so I'm not taking any chances. The coffee is really good. I write my thousand words. The sun rises.
• I drive off to buy the milk, biscuits, and one cabbage, then return to the house to get ready to go.
• I lose my keys, my headphones, and my mind. Then I find all of them. Except for my mind.
• I finally hop on the scooter and get on the road. An hour later than I wanted to, OF COURSE. I have to drive for an hour and a half to get to the Capital City, where I will do my shopping. Along the way, I see lots of ankles. Lots and lots and lots of ankles. They're everywhere I look, they're all I've been noticing lately. In India everyone wears flip flops or sandals, and most people drive motorcycles, and if you drive behind someone wearing flip flops on a motorcycle, you see his ankles. Skinny ankles, big ankles. I see the heel and the ankle and the calf of many people, and somehow it is very touching to me. It almost makes me cry.
• My first stop (after the petrol pump) is the nursery, where I buy the only plant medicine that doesn't have DEATH in the warnings. It's organic, thank the Lord. I really hope it works, because the ants and strange little moths are digging through everything with revenge on their minds. We are just outside the jungle.
• The second stop is my favorite restaurant, because it is lunchtime and they serve the best fish thali in the WORLD. I'm the only one in the restaurant eating alone with a book, but I've embraced my inner foreigner-freak and I don't mind. It's spicy. My nose runs and I go through a lot of tissues.
• My next stop is the toy store. I have my annual panic attack over Christmas buying. It all goes through my head, all of it. What is cheap, what is crap, what is worth buying, how much is too much? How to be simple. I wish I made everyone stuff, but there's barely anything to craft with, oh dear. The toys tower over my head. I move through the store like a buffalo, knocking things over. Christmas is wonderful in Goa, because though they celebrate (being a Catholic state) the holiday is muted and simple, mostly. This store is trying hard to beat that trend, playing Silver Bells over the loudspeaker. I'll Silver Bell you, I think, in the midst of a Lego quandary. Silver Bells is my least favorite Christmas song, except for that other one, what's it called. I can't remember. This is the Lego quandary: One box is bigger and better, but has no little guys. And we all know the little guys are the best part, but they come in the expensive box that has barely any lego pieces. I have about seven boxes to choose from. I've come all this way for these imported toys, because I simply can't bear any more crap in my life, nothing else broken. Lego has stayed with us through the years. I make a compromise, get the big box and one little box with four guys. 
• The dolls are all white or a weird violent orange or pink. I don't buy one. I'll get a doll for YaYa when I can get her one I believe in.
• When I'm finished at the toy store I head to the Apple Store. I get completely lost, and as I find myself, I realize why it is that I can never learn this city. Somehow because of the river and the ocean, the water is on two perpendicular sides. And I'm always using the water to orient myself. Wrongly. It doesn't help that I can't keep a map or grid in my head at all. Anyhow, I find it. It's not a real Apple Store, it's just an affiliate. It's a wee enclave. There is a whole family in there when I arrive, with teenage boys in tow. We barely fit in the mini store. We can smell each other. I buy two of the tiniest contraptions they have.
• Then it's time for the music store. In the music store I see a poster which proclaims that ASHLEY! Goa's greatest one man band, is available for concerts. I also see that among the nativity sets which are for sale in the music store, there is a package that contains glow in the dark figures of the nativity. They are hideously green and terrifying. I forcibly restrain myself from buying it. In the end I only walk away without them in my bag because I am afraid of destroying the gentle blooming of my children's faith with the hideousity of Glow in the Dark Baby Jesus. I purchase the gift I'm really there for and get myself out the door.
• After the music store I head back out on the scooter and drive to Mapusa, to brave the chaos of the Mapusa market. How can I describe it? A block of mostly open air shops, a mile square. As busy as Black Friday, but without any fighting or anger. It's just a regular day in the market, with a little added bustle of Christmas decoration sellers. I jog around to nine different shops and buy: clay candle holders from the clay market, leaf plates and bowls for our annual Christmas dinner on Saturday, paper cups for the same, paper stars, a present for Jaya (I'm excited about what I got her!), wooden embroidery hoops, coffee from the Tea and Coffee Corner place, six new chai cups, and nailpolish.
• It's dark as I head home. I'm hungry but I have a backpack and two bags full of loot, and I don't really want to stop. I've been hot in the sun all day, but now it's chilly and I stop to put my shawl on. It doesn't work so well on the bike, really, but I don't own a sweater. I pass carolers in saris singing Feliz Navidad. There go all your stereotypes. I go through The Fridge, which is what we call this incredibly long span of road along the way which is surrounded by cashew forest. I'm not sure why, but it is always incredibly cold there, especially at night. The Fridge can make your teeth chatter.
• When I'm pulling into my village, almost home, a VERY LARGE SNAKE comes slithering out of the grass to cross the road. I mean, it's HUGE. Thick like someone's thigh and I don't see the end of it, though it's six feet into the road by the time I swerve around it.
• An eventful, successful day. (Today I did some research on the snake. Turns out it was an Indian python, not really dangerous to humans (pigs are another story) but super cool to spot on the road. I'm so blind to wildlife (What bird? Where? I can't see it!) that of course something has to be almost under my tire for me to see it, but I did see it! It was cool! A huge python in the wild, the perfect end to a crazy day.

Comments

[Rebeca]

Feliz Navidad! I can almost picture myself along for the ride. Much love...

[leaf]

Oh, I love it! A perfect window into your life 4 days before Christmas in Goa.

[#1mama]

I love the whole glow in the dark nativity scene. Just you might have put an image in your children's heads that they'd never be able to get rid of. The snake thing not so cool. The carolers in saris was a good image too. Sounds like you had a crazy day.

[Jo]

It's amazing how quickly Christmas comes round isn't it? I know it sounds weird but just wondering, what do chai cups look like?

[Eleanor]

That's silly, everyone knows that CHINUA! is Goa's best one-man band.

[Rae]

Jo, chai cups are like tea or coffee cups, but really small. When we have chai, we usually have just a little bit.

Eleanor, of course you're right!

[Eileen Plunkett]

How nice to have been able to spend your day with you, Rachel. You write about real life exactly like you did in Eve Tree....it's like you're sitting here in my living room or me in yours, this is not easy to do....loved being with you

[Green Girl in Wisconsin]

What a day of shopping! I can relate to the Lego dilemma, but not (thank goodness) to riding into a PYTHON.

[natalie]

I remember the utter exhaustion of shopping in India. So glad you got to spend a day alone. Eeek! Python!

We decided to stay home in Chicago rather than go to my family's place in Ohio. Then, just yesterday, it was decided that my entire family of feuding (bollywood-style) in-laws, including the cousin we haven't seen in 5 years and his new (white) girlfriend, and his dad, our Tao Ji, that, upon last meeting only said 3 words to me "You are fat!" and who thinks my mom-in-law has poisoned his food for years (seriously) are all coming to my place on Christmas Eve! Tao Ji was insistent on NOT coming if Violet (mom-in-law) was coming - because he didn't want to get sick. Right before I got the text message that he agreed to come, my daughter puked everywhere- she has the stomach flu. I've never laughed so hard in all my life. Literally rolling on the floor in tears laughing, because now, even if he doesn't eat or drink a drop, there's still a chance he'll catch a stomach bug in our house. I am purposely not going to disinfect :)

Not sure why I felt the need to share this story with a stranger, but no one else seems to see the humor in it and I think you might?

So...now I'm stumped on what to prepare if hardly anyone will eat anyways. Also not sure what to wear...do I freak out the new girlfriend and go all Hindi-salwar on her, or just be my normal American self.

Most definitely the latter.

[OhAbigail]

I wish I could magically fly you to the UK for a day of christmas lego collecting!
I have bought my daughter a pair of Pyjamas in a sale that have rockets and planets on them and the one on the front is glow in the dark. I suspect as she is not quite 2 it will freak her out!!

[Heather Wawa]

You are so brave!!! I had to beg my parents to NOT get our family a membership to the Science Museum because I'm too scared to drive downtown.

Thanks for taking us along for the ride. I feel like I've just been to Goa.

[Paola]

I was all ooohh and aaaaaah until you mentioned THE PYTHON.
I would have probably collapsed right there. See, one of the reasons I will never go to certain areas of the world is snakes. They TERRIFY me. So you are brave, more so because you drive a scooter.

[Hil]

Oh, I could eat your writing up with a spoon! During our own xmas in the US, I was just tickled by thinking about you NOT owning a sweater, riding a scooter to the shops in India, and discovering a python. You sound like Indiana Jones! I have been checking in on your family over a long time, and I feel so happy to watch you all bloom and grow. THANKYOU for being you.