With visions of walking for the rest of his life and shoveling mountain-high mounds of manure, he made his way down the attic stairs.
After the initial upheaval created by his appearance had died down, after Mr. MacDonald had called him a goodly number of unpleasant names, after he’d been assured that word of his whereabouts would be sent to his parents, my father settled down to serve his sentence.
Indeed, more of a sentence than he’d anticipated he discovered on the first morning of his stay. Roused from his hard cot in the kitchen a good two hours before daybreak, he was ordered to pull on his boots, coat, and cap and follow Mr. MacDonald out to feed the stock.
He didn’t mind all that much. The same would have been expected of him at home. But when he returned to the kitchen, cold and ravenous for the likes of one of his mother’s Christmas morning breakfasts of eggs, sausages, bacon, bread, and jam, he was appalled to find only a bowl of lumpy oatmeal and a cup of strong tea. While the MacDonalds tucked into the porridge, my father felt the first pangs of homesickness.
As the day progressed, he discovered the MacDonalds held to many of the traditions of Christmas in the Old Country. There was no Christmas tree and only a few of the most practical of presents such as hand knitted mittens and scarves. But worst of all, at noon, instead of the turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, vegetables, and mincemeat pies he knew would grace his mother’s table, there appeared on the MacDonald’s board a true Scottish Christmas treat. When Mrs. MacDonald placed the great, gray mound he recognized as haggis in the centre of the table, his stomach roiled. And when boiled potatoes were passed around to be dipped in melted butter and oatmeal, he nearly gave in to tears.
In the days that followed, Mr. MacDonald, a canny Scot who’d been blessed with two daughters, decided to get as much work as possible out of the wayward youth. My father mucked out the cow barn, shoveled the pig sty, and cleaned the henhouse. He claimed he chopped enough wood to fuel the MacDonald stoves and fireplaces for the next two years and mended a harness so old it must have come from Scotland with Mr. MacDonald’s grandfather.
As if this wasn’t enough, Iona began to lose her appeal. He’d been a prisoner in her home for only two days when the true personality of his beloved started to reveal its unattractive self. While absence from Iona had indeed made his heart grow fonder…so fond he’d gotten himself into one of the worst scrapes in his life…he discovered that familiarity can indeed breed contempt.
During the early part of his captivity she’d been sweet and downright coquettish. Dressed in her Sunday best she’d cavorted about the kitchen that had become his home, tossing her golden curls and being every bit the beguiling creature who’d lured him into this entrapment.
But when her mother had advised her that Christmas was over and it was time to put away her finery and get back to work, quite another Iona appeared. She argued and whined until her scowling father appeared, and she stamped upstairs in tears to change her clothes.
She did her chores at a snail’s pace, complaining loudly and making a poor job of whatever tasks her mother assigned to her. For a farm boy whose mother and sisters worked cheerfully from dawn to dusk, these were glaring shortcomings. In the evenings she sat scowling at the kitchen table while her mother wound rags into hair my love-smitten father had believed to be a natural tangle of beguiling waves and curls.
Worst of all were the meals. Bland, watery soups and stews regularly graced the MacDonald board. Vegetables either mush or so hard they had to be gnawed lay on his plate beside pieces of meat tougher than the old harness he had mended. Mrs. MacDonald’s bread came from the oven baked as hard and dry as clay. He felt he’d retch if he saw another bit of salt herring on the supper table.
Iona, he discovered, like her mother, couldn’t cook. Her biscuits could break windows and teeth; her cakes had the flavor and texture of sawdust. To a young man who enjoyed food and was accustomed to his mother’s fine culinary skills, this was a major shortcoming.
My father knew he’d been wrong to sneak into the MacDonald house for a romantic tryst, and he deserved to be punished but surely this was overkill.
Finally the two weeks ended. Isobel, pale but recovered, was allowed to venture out of her room. And my father was permitted to return home.
Feeling like the prodigal son, he nevertheless walked the five miles home in record time. He wondered what punishment his father, a strict disciplinarian, would have in store. One thing he knew for certain. The family’s fatted calf would be safe.
His stomach grumbled. Please, please, please, just let me have one decent meal before I have to face the music.
The heady smells of a roast beef dinner gushed out to greet him as he opened the kitchen door.
“Gordon!” His mother rushed to hug him. “Oh, it’s good to have you home!”
My father looked over her shoulder at the platter of roast beef in the centre of the big oak table, at the steaming bowls of potatoes, carrots, and gravy, at the pie and rolls, then at his brothers and sisters seated around it and, finally, at his father at its head.
No one else spoke. The old clock on the shelf in the corner ticked. The fire in the big wood stove crackled. His stomach rumbled
“Sit down.” Finally Granddad reached for the platter of meat and jerked his head in the direction of my father’s usual chair. “And let this be the end of it. Anyone forced to eat Effie MacDonald’s cooking for two weeks has suffered enough.”
Christmas Mysteries
Last year I was delighted to discover that, even in the hustle and commercialism of a department store, I could find yet another inspiration that would help my heart once again find the magic of Christmas.
That stimulation was just inside the door of the establishment; wicker trays of candied fruit wrapped in cellophane decorated with big, red bows. Happy memories flooded back. A smile crinkled across my face as I carefully placed the nicest looking one in my cart. Finally I had one of my very own!
From my earliest recollections of Christmas, I’d been fascinated by candied fruit. Each year my grandmother’s sister, my great aunt Molly, sent Nanna a tray of the confections from Boston. I waited for the delivery of the sturdy, cardboard box much more eagerly than my grandmother. She’d simply unwrap it, gaze at the fruit for a moment, then, with a sigh of “Oh, Molly,” (I never learned the reason for this reaction) place it on the parlor mantel.
In my perception, each fruit tray was a thing of mysterious beauty. The bright red cherries, the golden pineapple, and the glistening dark dates and figs resplendent in their sugar coating beneath gleaming cellophane were items of infinite wonder.
The day finally arrived when the tray was unwrapped and presented for the enjoyment of Christmas visitors. I was never offered any of the fruit, not even what was left after the visiting marauders had finished with it. It was, I presumed, considered a grown-up delicacy.
The slight didn’t offend me. The impulse called curiosity regarding the fruit’s taste did rear its head but I always managed to stifle it. I couldn’t bear the thought of its flavor not living up to the ambrosia of my imagination. Better to keep the fantasy intact.
The sight of the remaining figs and odd pieces of pineapple laying helter-skelter in their woven basket—the cherries never lasted—seemed as sad a sight as when I found one of my snow tunnels crushed by neighborhood boys.
The arrival of the candied fruit tray marked the first of many magic mysteries of Christmas at my grandparents’ house. Next there was the amazing phenomenon of how sugar would magically stick to the warm doughnuts Nanna had fried in the big cast iron pan on the wood stove.
Then there was the mystery of the missing chickens. Every year, mid December, two of my grandfather’s Rhode Island Reds disappeared. Granddaddy said they’d wandered off and had probably found another family to live with. It was years before I connected the two golden brown birds my grandmother served up for Christmas dinner with those hens that had regularly disappeared.
I was
about the same age, five or six, when I realized that the reason the plum pudding my grandmother steamed in the oven days before the big event magically burst into flames when touched with a match was because of its dousing with the contents of the bottle she kept tucked in the back of the kitchen cupboard. Brandy was not a word I was yet familiar with.
An even bigger mystery was how Santa got down the chimney. The big fireplace between the parlor and dining room was never lit on Christmas Eve so the hearty old fellow was in no danger of being turned into a ball of flame on entry. Still, looking up the flue, I couldn’t imagine how he managed to get down its not-so-wide length.
My grandfather explained that Santa was a spirit and, therefore, could make himself into any size necessary to visit good children. Nevertheless, each Christmas Eve, I found myself on my hands and knees peering up into the blackness…not entirely convinced Granddaddy had it right.
What Granddaddy did have a firm handle on was a direct line to Santa. I’ll never forget the Christmas he arranged to have the Jolly Old Elf alter his schedule to pay me an early evening visit.
I must have been misbehaving one Christmas Eve afternoon when he suggested Santa might drop in after supper to see what I was up to.
Slightly apprehensive, I settled down to eat my supper. Shortly after the meal, when Granddaddy had gone out to feed the chickens, I heard it. My heart leaped and seemed to stop.
Sleigh bells and definitely prancing and pawing on the verandah roof!
It took every ounce of my willpower not to rush out into the yard and look up, Granddaddy’s admonitions of years previous echoing across my mind. If I ever tried to actually see Santa, he’d told me one Christmas Eve when I’d been especially slow in going to bed, my “nice” rating would plummet into the naughty range. Every child with the least bit of Santa knowledge knew what that meant.
So I sat at the kitchen table, hands clasped so tightly my knuckles turned as white as the dooryard snow. My breath clogged in my throat as I listened to the magic of the moment.
A scuffling noise suggested lift-off. Then all was quiet, except for the ticking of the kitchen clock.
My breathing was just beginning to return to normal when Granddaddy returned. He stamped snow from his boots and began to unbutton his mackinaw.
“Granddaddy, he was here!” I leaped up to seize his cold hand. “I heard him…up on the roof! We have to go out and look for tracks!”
“I thought I saw something in the sky when I came out of the chicken coop,” he said thoughtfully. “So he did make it. I must remember to thank him.”
“Come on, come on!” I tugged at his hand. “I want to see where he landed.”
As I stood in the dooryard moments later, Granddaddy placed a ladder against the edge of the roof, and climbed up to inspect the freshly fallen snow.
“What do you see? What do you see?” I jumped up and down. “Are there hoof prints? Can you see if Santa walked around up there?”
By now, Granddaddy had reached the verandah roof and bent to examine the snow.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “There are hoof prints…a lot of them. Some kind of deer, I’d say. And a few boot marks, too.”
“Let me see, let me see!” I cried starting up the ladder.
“No, no.” Granddaddy was already on the top rung and beginning to descent. “It’s slippery up here. Your grandmother wouldn’t allow you on the roof. And I don’t think Santa would be happy to know you were checking up on him.”
His last sentence stopped me with one foot on the first rung. Hoping I’d already passed the naughty-nice test on the positive side, I wasn’t about to risk losing my rating.
That was a long time ago. Coming back to the moment, I went down a few more store aisles with their festive frippery and piped-in holiday hits, those memories warming my heart. I headed back to the fruit display at the front of the store, carefully replaced that lovely tray on the shelf, and pushed my cart toward the check-out.
I wanted to leave one Christmas mystery intact.
A Christmas Call
“Almost seven thirty.” My grandfather pulled his gold watch from his vest pocket and held it out as far as it would reach on its fob to squint at the time. “We should be getting ready to go over.”
By “over” he meant to my parents’ house across the backyard. The two houses shared a telephone located there. Since it was Christmas Eve the entire family would congregate around it and wait for that much anticipated ring that meant my uncle who lived in Alberta was on the line.
In the 1950’s long distance calls were expensive, to be used only in emergencies or on very special occasions such as this, the Yuletide call from western Canada to our home on the east coast. My uncle Loris came home every second July and wrote weekly but the Christmas call was something to be anticipated with excitement and joy.
Glancing at my grandparents as they donned their coats, hats, and boots, I recognized the expressions on their faces. I’d once glimpsed myself in the hall mirror late one Christmas Eve when Santa’s visit was imminent.
“Put on your coat, darlin’.” My grandfather’s words always echoed his Celtic roots when he was happy. “The yard is slippery. We don’t want to be late.”
“Yes, Granddaddy.” I glanced wishfully at the heap of presents on the oil-cloth-covered kitchen table. I’d eaten supper at my grandparents’ house to participate in piling them there after the meal was cleared away. A family Yuletide tradition, gift opening took place in their kitchen after receiving my uncle’s call. It was much warmer near the oil stove than in the parlor where the decorated Christmas tree stood well preserved in the chill of the unheated room. With a final look and a sigh, I struggled into my coat and boots. Christmas Eve was not a time to be belligerent.
We started across the short distance that separated our houses, my grandmother on my grandfather’s arm. Brimming with seven-year-old Christmas excitement, I slid and skidded ahead on the ice. Soon we’d get the call and could move on to gift opening. Later, much later, after I’d been bundled off to bed, there’d be the visit from the Jolly Old Elf.
I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy Uncle Loris’s call. He had a ranch near Smokey Lake with horses and dogs, the two creatures I fancied with all my heart and soul. But he didn’t talk about them much, mostly wanted to know about us and how we were. Anyhow, I couldn’t pet them over a telephone wire.
I looked up at the stars, diamonds in a sea of black velvet, and sucked in a breath of cold, clear air. I spread my arms wide and swung around and around in an effort to view all of them.
“Granddaddy, are those the same stars that were shining on the night Jesus was born?” I asked.
“Exact same ones, darlin’.”
“And was one of them the one that the shepherds and wise men followed to…?”
“Come along, Gail.” My grandmother, never as patient with my meanderings and musings as my grandfather, spoke sharply.
“Coming, Nanna.” I slid the rest of the way and bumped to a halt at the bottom of the steps.
“Always dreaming, that child.” Nanna shook her head and proceeded inside as my grandfather held the door open for her and me. Granddaddy winked as I passed him.
“One of them was,” he bent to whisper into my ear. “Maybe that real bright one right over your Dad’s roof.”
Inside my parents greeted Nanna and Granddaddy before we all made our way into the dining room where the phone sat on a small table in the corner. Chairs had been placed around it in a semi-circle, and we settled down to wait.
“The yard is very icy.” My mother made an attempt at small talk even though the air fairly crackled with anticipation.
“Ice, ice, and more ice,” Nanna replied adjusting herself into a comfortable position. “We never had winters like this when I was a child.”
“Makes for good skating on the river though.” Granddaddy nudged me and slanted a conspiratorial look.
“Sure does.” My father joined in. “I remember one Christmas
when I was eight or ten and all I wanted was screws to fasten blades to a pair of old boots so that I could skate on the mill pond.”
“I’ve asked for skates this year…” My comment was interrupted by the phone. Its ring made us all start. Even though it was expected, our nerves were on edge.
My father, as always, was the designated one to answer.
“Hello. Loris?” He spoke louder than normal; reception was never good. “Merry Christmas. Yes, we’re all here. How is the weather in Alberta? Good, good. Here, I’ll let you speak to your mother.”
My grandmother, her eyes shining like the stars in the Christmas sky, took the receiver carefully, gingerly, as if she were afraid she might sever the connection. “Loris, hello, dear.”
Her conversation lasted only a few minutes before, with tears in her eyes, she bade her son farewell until July and handed the receiver to my grandfather.
“Merry Christmas, son. How’s everything? Livestock doing well? Do you have much snow? That cold, eh? How are Isabelle and the boy? Yes, yes, we’ll take a turn talking to them.”
My mother spoke next, and then the phone was handed to me to speak to my cousin Bobby. The adults always seemed to think children wanted to speak to children when what I really wanted to do was talk to my gregarious aunt who would tell me about their horses and dogs.
Finally my father took the phone to wind up the call, and it was over for another year. As he replaced the receiver on the cradle, Nanna pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her sweater and sniffed into it. Granddaddy cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said. “Well.”
I waited patiently. There were always a few moments of silence after the call. Then my father stood and winked at me. “Maybe we should head back across the yard. I’d say it’s just about time to open presents.”
How My Heart Finds Christmas Page 2