How My Heart Finds Christmas

by Gail MacMillan

  “Thank you, my dear, thank you.” Uncle Johnny, shy under her billowing praise, drew his watch from his breast pocket and peered down at it. “Now perhaps we’d best set upon this lovely dinner you’ve prepared before it becomes cold.”

  Uncle Johnny passed away that spring, alone in his room at the boarding house. Few people attended his funeral. In his poverty and isolation, he’d been largely forgotten.

  I stood by his grave clutching my mother’s hand and Emily of New Moon, the book I’d come to cherish and whose author would have a major influence on my literary life.

  “He spent his life working as an accountant for an insurance company,” my mother told me. “Yet he’d graduated from one of the most prestigious universities in this country with the highest honors. Remember the insignia on that old tie he always wore? Sadly a degree in history and philosophy doesn’t bode well for employment so there he sat year after year, making a living, his keen, creative mind moldering away in a stack of business ledgers when he longed to do historical research and write poetry. It was only in his final years…” Her voice broke, and she looked down at me, tears swimming in her eyes. “But he was always, always, a scholar and a gentleman.”

  In later years that family history Uncle Johnny had so painstakingly compiled, then tediously typed using multiple sheets of carbon paper, would become the basis of a number of my most successful stories. But perhaps, most important were the words I discovered tucked away on its back page, the warmth of the true Christmas spirit in each line.

  “As I walk through the quiet beauty of Chatham’s tree-lined streets, I meet Opal and her lovely little daughter, Gail. What a joy it is, as always, to see them both.”

  My Second Kingdom

  That Christmas marked the beginning of a new and forever phase of my life. After reading Uncle Johnny’s Christmas gift, I recognized what I would call my Second Kingdom, my world of writing.

  It had been lurking somewhere in the recesses of my mind for years, since I’d first uncovered the magic to be found in books. Now, with Emily of New Moon as my guiding light, I felt vindicated in plunging ahead with the story ideas that had been simmering in my brain. The moment a “just right” idea hit, I now recognized it much as Emily welcomed and reveled in her “flashes.”

  Like fireworks and lightning, my creative world would explode with a starburst of light, sound, sensation, and color that put the opening of a Disney movie to shame. The drawbridge of my Second Kingdom would lower to let action and adventure, heroes and heroines, mystery and mayhem tumble helter-skelter over my imagination. My heart raced, my pulses soared. I’d wave my magic pencil, ready to create beauty and joy and suspense and drama and excitement all out of thin air.

  On the wings of imagination, I’d fly away, leaving the dull, the boring, the pedantic far behind. I no longer heard the neighbor’s incessantly barking Chihuahua or the radio in the living room. I’d left my home and body for the mystical realm called THE STORY.

  Suspended in time and space, I’d enter the bodies and souls of my characters and set them free. I’d see, taste, touch, smell, and hear what they did, rise and fall with their victories and defeats, ache with their pain, laugh with their joy, sob with their sorrows. As the plot twisted and turned, I’d be astonished, astounded, horrified, saddened, amused, and, most of all, amazed at how these shadow people would act and react within its caldron. They’d grabbed the story line in their teeth and were off at an exhilarating gallop.

  Enthralling figments of my imagination, they took control. Strengths and weaknesses shaping their lives and deeds, they moved through incident after incident, chapter after chapter until, finally, they reached that physical and psychological precipice…the climax.

  They struggled, lives and souls in jeopardy. I felt their adrenaline rush, their hearts pounding. Then, with surging spirits, we triumphed!

  As we slid, satisfied and grateful, into what I’d later learn to term the denouement, I’d breathe a contented sigh. The vision was fading but I couldn’t feel sad or disappointed. I knew another would shortly come again in a starburst of light and sound and sensation.

  In later years, my imaginings would next be off to an editor. Over the years, I’ve learned to handle acceptance and rejection without letting either overwhelm me. I’ve also learned that a story spurned in one market place can be touted in another. To lose faith in what I’ve created out of thin air after a first, fifth, or even fifteenth try would be to do it a grave injustice.

  Fortunately, in a number of cases, there’s been the acceptance letter, confirmation that the people and events I’ve brought into this world will have a future in the minds and imaginations of those wonderful beings called readers.

  Of course, there’s always a bit of a let-down that space between acceptance and publication, the writer’s equivalent of the Baby Blues. Briefly, I’m back in the world of barking dogs, and blaring music.

  But there’s a simple cure. It’s easy, it’s magic. I settle in front of my computer, flex my fingers, and once again head back to my Second Kingdom.

  Thank you, Mom and Uncle Johnny, for that very special Christmas.

  Do This in Remembrance of Me

  Growing up, I was blessed with a large, extended family. My parents and I lived next door to my maternal grandparents and two wonderful aunts. I especially remember my Aunt Marion and her joy in the Christmas season. When she passed away, I inherited a number of her possessions, among them her beloved little, ceramic Christmas tree.

  Each Yuletide I place the little ornament on the mantel in our living room, plug it in to an outlet, and find joy in its multicolored lights. Each time, I’m reminded of the words of the Communion service taken from the gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 26, verses 20 through 29.

  “Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus said.

  It’s in that spirit I place the little twelve-inch tree above the fireplace in memory of my Aunt Marion who loved the Christmas season so dearly. I do it in remembrance of her and the many acts of love and altruism that she performed each December.

  Aunt Marion never married and lived for her first sixty years with her parents and sister in a big, old Victorian home in the centre of town. Blessed with a broad, bright smile she captured the hearts of everyone she met in her aura of optimism and friendliness. Most of all, she loved sharing and giving. Christmas offered her the perfect opportunity to do both.

  Each December 25th when I was a child, after I’d had a couple of hours to enthuse over what Santa had left for me, Aunt Marion would arrive with a pillow case full of presents she said the Jolly Old Elf had mistakenly delivered to her house. The contents held all the mystery and magic of an unexpected treasure trove. It seemed that while Santa brought the gifts I’d requested to my house, he continually misdirected delights beyond my expectations to Aunt Marion’s. The joy I experienced rummaging through that pillow slip returns each Christmas as I plug in that little ceramic tree.

  In later years, Aunt Marion found herself alone and lonely in the rambling family home. Her parents and sister had passed away and with them the big family Christmas dinners that had been a tradition in their dining room. The children like myself for whom she’d helped Santa deliver gifts had grown up and moved away. She fell into a deep depression that doctors and psychiatrists were unable to alleviate or, I believe, fully appreciate.

  Two weeks after Christmas the year she celebrated her seventy-second birthday she was diagnosed with brain cancer.

  As I sat by her hospital bed where she lay unconscious after a devastating surgery, I recalled her glowing smile, her never-failing joy in the Yuletide season, and her many kindnesses not only to myself but to so many others. She’d lived a beautiful life through her joy of giving. When she passed away two weeks later, I was not alone in my heartbreak.

  At her funeral three days later, the minister surprised the congregation by rising and, before speaking to them, looking heaven-ward.

  “Marion, forgive me.” His words startl
ed us. “Forgive me for breaking my promise to you, but I’ve searched my heart and decided I must do as my conscience dictates.” He turned back to the standing-room-only gathering.

  “You all know Marion was a loving and giving person,” he said. “You also know that these last few years she’s felt an emptiness in her life, especially during the Christmas season. But still, she wanted to share. Toward this goal, she came to me and asked me if I knew of any families who were finding the Yuletide season financially difficult. Of course I did. So she wrote checks, generous checks made out to me that she might provide for them. She became their anonymous angel.

  “Near the end, cancer robbed her of the ability to enjoy life but I believe, I must believe, that memories of all those good and wonderful Christmases, Christmases that she was responsible for making merry and bright lingered somewhere in her mind and gave her the sense of peace and contentment that only a life well lived can produce.”

  He looked up again and smiled. “I’m not concerned that you won’t forgive me, Marion. Your generous heart will allow you to do no less.”

  Therefore, each year as I set up the little ceramic Christmas tree that she lighted with such joy every December 24th, I softly whisper my own version of those beautiful words of the Communion service: this I do in remembrance of you.

  Her memory kindles the true meaning of Christmas in my heart.

  Those Christmas Cranberries

  While many of the memories of Christmas that light joy in my heart are warm and reverent like the story of Aunt Marion, others like the tale of my father’s quarantine bring a chuckle. My recollection of how we got our Christmas cranberries one year is another such a story.

  Cranberries have always been an integral part of our family Christmas dinner. Succulent and sweetly tart, they brighten our festive table and enhance the flavor of roast turkey. Nevertheless there was one year when I believe the memory of their acquisition soured my father’s normal enjoyment of the crimson fruit and must have rendered them much more bitter than sweet.

  It began one October morning about nine weeks before Christmas. My father and I had arrived at the marsh to do some duck hunting just as day was breaking. Unfortunately, it promised to be of the bluebird variety, full of clear skies and slack breezes, miserable conditions for duck hunting. Nevertheless, we sloshed through yards of sucking mud to put out our decoys, then struggled back to our blind to wait.

  When three hours of patience yielded nothing but increasing sunshine and a few flocks passing so high overhead as to be little more than fly specks in the troposphere, my father grew restless.

  “Nothing’s going to come in today,” he said dropping his shells back into his jacket pocket and leaning his gun against our ambush. “Still, there’s no need to go home empty-handed. When we were putting out the decoys, I saw some cranberries. We may as well pick them. Never too early to start planning for Christmas dinner.”

  Once again we struggled through the ooze until we’d reached the berries. The plumpest ones appeared to be farther out and so we slogged doggedly onward.

  Glancing back at one point, I realized we’d passed our decoys. Now they floated serenely midway between us and the blind. For a moment the situation gave me pause. Then I shrugged. What did it matter? Nothing was going to come in that day. Putting the thought aside, I returned to filling my game bag with berries.

  Around noon I glanced up to see yet another flock of high flying black ducks passing overhead. Apparently intent on some destination further along the bay, they, like all their predecessors, appeared ready to bypass our lures. Assuming this would be as close as I’d get to game that day, I straightened up and shielded my eyes to watch them strung out across the faultless blue.

  The next instant my assumptions were shattered. One of their number had spotted our decoys. Undeterred by the two camouflage-garbed figures nearby, he whirled and began an easy downward glide to join the wooden impostures. His friends followed. Shortly twenty-five big black ducks had landed around our drawing cards not more than twenty yards from where my father and I stood ankle-deep in bog.

  Slowly my father straightened from his berry picking. His mouth dropped open. His last handful plopped one by one into the thick black slime imprisoning his feet. An atheist confronted by a miracle could not have looked more astounded.

  Careless of his condition, the ducks relaxed and, clucking like contented hens, began swimming placidly among our decoys. Eventually they swam so close to us I’m sure we could have killed a few if we’d had stones instead of cranberries at our disposal.

  My father at that point, I figured, was seeing plenty of red without the help of any ruddy swamp fruit. Not a man easily driven to profanity, he suddenly burst into a description of those tantalizing birds which would have challenged the repertoire of a drunken sailor.

  The birds, unimpressed, continued to swim in leisurely circles in and out among our decoys. Instinct seemed to be telling them they were as safe as a duck could possibly be. But, then, no one has ever successfully deciphered the deductions of a duck.

  Finally my father could stand it no more. With a mighty roar, he reached into his game bag, grabbed a handful of cranberries, and flung them at those irritating birds.

  “Get!” he yelled.

  Squawking their annoyance, the flock rose up into the blue and was soon out of sight.

  After they’d gone, we made our way to shore. We didn’t speak. No words were adequate in such a situation.

  Only when we reached our blind to find a freshly dead black duck at the base of a tree behind it did my father’s power of speech return.

  “Must have flown into that white birch and broken its neck,” he muttered staring down at it. “Probably happened while he was looking back over his shoulder, laughing at us!”

  From his expression when he tasted the cranberries that Christmas, I guessed that all the sugar in Cuba couldn’t completely erase the bitterness of the memory that Yuletide condiment inspired.

  The Christmas of the China Dog

  Christmases have a way of becoming monikered. For example, I recall The Christmas Aunt Molly Visited and The Christmas Janet Got Engaged. For me the most outstanding was the one I named The Christmas of the China Dog.

  Twelve years old at the time, I had a passion that held me in its grasp. For all of the dozen years that constituted my life to that date I’d been a passionate dog fancier. From my earliest recollections, I remembered being enamored with canines. One of my favorite baby photos shows me beside a big, white, stuffed dog. He’s in a chair, I’m standing beside him. That pose speaks volumes about my regard for Fluffy.

  As I came of age to be allowed to play outside alone, I’d stand at the gate and wait for a dog, any dog, to pass by. Then I’d try to lure him into the yard to play.

  When I’d asked, begged, and pleaded for a dog of my own, my parents simply replied that I was too young for the responsibility. But this year I’d reached the age of baby-sitting maturity. Surely someone who could be trusted alone with young children could be judged capable of caring for one small, chewing, piddling puppy.

  I had good reason to hope that December. All the signs were there. My parents, being especially secretive, definitely were conspiring something big and exciting.

  Oh, sure, there was only one small, mysterious box for me under the tree (the rest with my name on them readily identifiable as books and clothing) but that, I deduced in my fanciful mind, contained a collar and leash. On Christmas morning my Collie puppy would be brought into the living room, a big red bow around his neck. I’d immediately name him Prince, and he and I would never again be separated…except for the demands of church and school.

  I didn’t think I would survive the final seven days prior to Christmas. Plans for my dog overwhelmed my every waking minute and dreams of my precious pooch filled my nights.

  I tingled, I hugged myself, I burst into song at odd and, often for those around me, startling moments. Although I occasionally caught my
parents casting puzzled glances at me, then between themselves, they appeared too absorbed in their own exuberance to be overly concerned.

  Sometimes, when I felt no one was looking, I’d steal into the living room, take the small box from beneath the tree, and stroke it gently, a smile tugging up the corners of my mouth.

  The big day arrived. My father, distributing the presents as usual, kept glancing over at my mother, a bemused but constant smile tipping his lips. In my memory, they’d always had the ability to communicate without words and I was certain I knew what they both anticipated.

  Finally all the gifts had been distributed, unwrapped, exclaimed over, and laid aside…all except the small box. The best for last I thought and wondered where they’d kept the puppy hidden. At our neighbor’s? That had to be it. Bob and Hilda loved dogs. Reassured I tried to will myself to stay calm and relax.

  After what seemed like hours, my father picked up the little box. I held my breath.

  “Gail,” he said looking over at his wife, his expression mirroring all the happiness I was feeling in my soul. “Your mother and I have something to tell you.”

  Yes, yes, oh yes, please get on with it! My heart hammered. I was barely able to breathe.

  “You’re going to have a baby brother or sister this spring.”

  Astounded I could only gape at them. A bucket of ice water hitting me in the face couldn’t have come as more of a shock. What was my father saying? I’d been an only child all my life. Now suddenly…

  But then my father was handing me the little box.

  “We know how much you love dogs…” he continued softly.

  Apparently he and my mother had feared a negative response to their announcement and so had been saving the puppy presentation until afterwards. I revived sufficiently to tear off the wrappings, my prospective sibling instantly unimportant. They could have their baby; I’d have my dog.

  I pawed through the tissue paper inside the box…where was that collar and leash?…and found at the bottom of it all a gold and white china dog.