Day by Day

by Delia Parr

  Nearly crippled with arthritis, the elderly woman shuffled slowly toward the display of vintage candy. Ginger got to the display first and studied the octogenarian who was slowly walking toward her. The frail woman wore a long, matted raccoon coat that seemed too heavy for her and a pair of cracked leather slippers, molded to her misshapen feet, from which a big toe poked through. A purple plumed hat that had seen better days was perched on her head.

  Quite a fall from glory, as infamous as it must have been, assuming the rumors about Miss Grumley were true. For the past score and a half years, she had lived at the Towers, but local gossip held that she had been known at one time as Bubbles. According to what Ginger had been told shortly after moving to Welleswood, as the woman’s stage name implied, she had been a striptease artist at The Palace in Philadelphia, although the term for what she did on stage today might be exotic dancer. No one dared to ask Miss Grumley if the rumors were true, especially since the rumors also claimed she had been saved and born again when a local minister appeared in the audience one night during one of her performances.

  No one could identify the minister or explain why he had been at The Palace in the first place, of course. But not a single soul in Welleswood these days doubted Miss Grumley’s faith or her dedication to living a faith-filled life every day by visiting the sick and spending long hours at their bedsides when they had no one else to keep them company during their final hours.

  “I’m sorry. These old legs don’t move so good anymore,” she apologized when she finally got to the display. When she caught her breath, she pointed to the carton holding the Mary Jane sweets. “It just wouldn’t seem like Christmas morning without finding one of those tucked under my pillow.”

  Ginger smiled, took a handful of the individually wrapped candies, slipped them into the woman’s hand and wrapped her gnarled fingers around them. “We all wish you a blessed Christmas,” she whispered.

  “Dear, dear. Just one will do. There’s only one Christmas morning,” she insisted. One by one, she managed to put all of the candy back into the display except for the one she slid into her coat pocket. “There. Now you’ll be sure to have enough for everyone else.”

  Rather than start a discussion about whether or not parents put something under their children’s pillows on Christmas Eve, Ginger simply smiled. “Is there anything else I can get for you? A piece of chocolate, perhaps?”

  Miss Grumley leaned so close that Ginger could smell the mustiness of her coat. “I’m not too fond of chocolate, but don’t tell Charlene. I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings,” she whispered.

  Ginger motioned across her lips with her index finger, silently zipping her lips closed.

  “Good girl. We’ll make this our little secret.” A twinkle suddenly appeared in pale eyes clouded with age. “On second thought, maybe I’ll take a piece of fudge. I’m going to spend some time sitting with Mrs. Thompson later today. She loves fudge.”

  “The fudge is right over there,” Ginger said and pointed to the case in the front of the store. “Why don’t you pick out what you want for Mrs. Thompson?”

  “You go ahead. I’ll meet you there. Just wrap up a piece of vanilla fudge. No nuts. She can’t chew so good anymore, but she’s too sick to care much about that, I suppose.”

  Ginger went behind the case and put on a pair of disposable plastic gloves. After cutting a piece of fudge hefty enough for the two women to share, she wrapped it in waxed paper, put it into a tiny pink bag, and handed it to Miss Grumley. “I hope the fudge makes her feel better. Wish her a blessed Christmas, too.”

  “I will, but if the doctors are right, she’ll have the best Christmas of all of us.”

  Ginger cocked her head. “Really?”

  Miss Grumley leaned close again. “She’ll be Home by then.” Her gaze grew wistful. “Imagine the glory of being Home for Christmas. The angels singing songs of praise. The heavens themselves trembling with the joy of another soul safely returned Home. Oh, to be in the very presence of God and surrounded by nothing but the very essence of His never-ending love…”

  She sighed and shook her head. “If we try real hard, we can almost have that kind of Christmas, too, but most folks these days get so caught up with buying gifts and going to parties, they forget what Christmas was meant to be. A time for joy. A time for praise. A time for us to be quiet ourselves, so we can feel His love.” Smiling, she patted Ginger’s hand. “Thank you for your kindness. Make sure you have a quiet Christmas,” she whispered before she turned around and shuffled out of the shop, leaving Ginger alone with a message that snuggled deep within her heart.

  With little time to ponder the message, Ginger tore off her apron, got rid of her plastic gloves and grabbed two large shopping bags with the supplies she needed to keep her promise to Charlene. “I’ll see you Monday, Kristen,” she cried and hurried out of the shop to get Vincent from school.

  When the doorbell rang just after seven o’clock that night, Ginger answered the door. Both Barbara and Judy were waiting outside together, and she ushered them in from the cold. After hugs, Ginger stored their coats in the closet and led them into the kitchen where she had set out a box and two large bowls in the center of the kitchen table. The box held ten-dozen candy canes. One bowl held precut pieces of silver ribbon; the other held tiny jingle bells tinted red, blue, green, gold or silver.

  They each sat down on different sides of the table and Ginger grinned. “I’m really glad you could come, but I hope you don’t mind working, too. I promised Charlene I’d try to get these done by Monday.”

  “Show us what to do,” Judy prompted.

  Ginger took a candy cane and held it upside down so it looked like the letter J. “It’s easy. Watch.” She wove a piece of ribbon through the jingle bell, tied it at the top of the candy cane, and held it out for Barbara and Judy to see.

  “Charlene is donating the supplies to the church for the children at the Christmas pageant on Christmas Eve so they can each jingle a J when they sing Happy Birthday to the baby Jesus. Unfortunately, there isn’t any group at church with enough time to get them made before the pageant. Everyone’s behind schedule, thanks to the early winter storms.”

  Barbara nodded, but looked skeptical. “How many are we making tonight?”

  Ginger giggled. “There are ten dozen in the box. I have two more boxes, but we don’t have to finish them all tonight.”

  “That’s 360!”

  “But I already made one, so we need 359 more. What we don’t finish tonight, I can get Tyler and Vincent to help me do over the weekend.”

  “That’s 358,” Judy announced and put her first completed one on the table in front of her.

  Barbara laughed and started making one of her own. “This looks like a good job for the teenagers in the youth group, but I’m not going to complain. At least we’re not sitting here gorging ourselves on chocolate or caramel apples. I’ve eaten my way through too much of December already.”

  Judy added another one to her finished pile. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing with you, Barbara, but between the clients at the salon and the seniors at the Towers, I’ve already consumed most of next year’s allotment for sweets.”

  Ginger shook the candy cane she had just finished decorating to make sure the bell jingled. “No problem. I’ll save what’s leftover from the dessert I made for tonight for the weekend. Tyler and Vincent won’t have any trouble polishing off your shares.”

  Barbara’s hands stilled. She sniffed the air, laced with cinnamon, and looked around. “That’s not the scent of a candle burning? Oh no, is that what I think it is over there on the counter?”

  “I took it out of the oven right before you got here,” Ginger admitted. “It needs to cool down a bit more.”

  Judy looked over at the counter and groaned. “I give up. I’ll never be able to sit here and watch you pull that cinnamon cake apart and eat it all by yourself.”

  “Me, either,” Barbara admitted. “We really do have to think abo
ut getting together more often, but definitely somewhere safer, like the new ladies’ gym that just opened on the avenue.”

  Judy tied another jingle bell into place. “What gym? Not the one that just opened up next to McAllister’s Bakery, I hope. Talk about silly. We’d end up at McAllister’s either before or after we got together.” She put the candy cane down in her finished pile. “We’d be better off meeting at the library.”

  Ginger shook another candy cane and made it jingle. “That’s a great idea,” she teased. “We couldn’t eat in the library, but we couldn’t talk there, either.”

  “Which brings us back to why we’re getting together tonight,” Barbara reminded her. “Didn’t you say you needed to talk about something tonight that was troubling you?”

  Ginger put both hands on the table and explained how she and Tyler would be alone with Vincent for the upcoming holiday. “When it was just Tyler and me, we’d either host a big open house or spend the afternoon going from one friend’s house to the next. With Vincent here this year…I’m not sure what we should do, but filling the house with people who are mostly strangers to him or dragging him around with us just doesn’t seem right. I guess I needed to know I wasn’t the only one anxious about how to celebrate the first Christmas with our grandson.”

  “You’re not alone,” Judy insisted and put her unfinished candy cane down on the table. “I’m not sure what Brian and I are going to do, exactly, but I think we’re just going to keep it simple.” She paused and toyed with a piece of ribbon. “I wish I could say I wasn’t worried that Candy might show up on Christmas Eve or Christmas itself and ruin everything, but I am,” she murmured.

  “Haven’t you heard anything at all about where she might be?” Barbara asked.

  “No. Not a word.”

  “Then why are you so worried that she’s coming? She hasn’t been home for a few years now,” Ginger offered.

  “But Brian is here now, and Christmas was Candy’s favorite holiday,” Judy countered. She took a deep breath.

  “If she’s ever going to head home, it will be this time of year. If I had either the time or the money, I’d be tempted to fly us both off somewhere, but since I have neither, I’m staying put. Brian is in the Christmas pageant at church on Christmas Eve, and I was thinking about volunteering to help serve dinner at the Towers on Christmas Day for the seniors who don’t have anywhere to go. I think they’d like having a young child like Brian there, too. I just haven’t called Penny yet to let her know for sure, but I think I should volunteer. What do you two think?”

  Ginger nodded her approval. “I think it’s a great idea and that Brian is very lucky to be with you.”

  Barbara concurred. “If sounds perfect to me. Christmas is going to be difficult for us, too, so we’ve decided not to stay home this year.”

  Along with Judy, Ginger listened attentively as Barbara detailed the startling news about the girls’ other grandparents, now confirmed beyond all doubt by DNA tests. “They’ve invited us all up to the farm for a few days over the holiday, and we’ve accepted. It’s a long drive, but it seems like the perfect opportunity to introduce the girls to the Carrs. We think being at the farm where their mother grew up will make it easier for them to understand who the Carrs are and why they’re going to be part of their lives as they grow up.”

  Ginger looked to Judy to comment first, but she seemed just as speechless. “I had no idea you’ve been dealing with all this,” she admitted. “Are you sure they aren’t going to fight for custody?”

  Barbara smiled. “Absolutely. They’ve signed a custody agreement limiting their involvement to visitations, and Carl Landon has just filed it with the court. John and I both believe the Carrs can only bring more love into the girls’ lives, and we’re looking forward to a country Christmas that should be very, very special for all of us.”

  Ginger was truly happy for both of her friends, but their plans for Christmas only made her more anxious to have her own. “Since you both have such good plans, maybe you can help me with ours, not that we’ve made a single one. It’s just going to be Tyler, Vincent and me,” she said, quickly detailing where each of her three children would be. She also described Vincent’s attempt to run away and how important it was to make the holiday special for him. “Okay, ladies. Ideas?”

  Barbara shook her head. “Wait. Before we can give you any ideas, you have to answer a few questions.”

  “Right. Like whether or not you want to stay home like I am or go away, like Barbara,” Judy suggested.

  Guided by the echo of Miss Grumley’s suggestion to find the quiet in Christmas, Ginger answered quickly. “Home.”

  “Good. At this late date, you’d probably have trouble making travel arrangements anyway,” Barbara noted. “What are we talking about? Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?”

  “Both.”

  “Isn’t Vincent in the Christmas pageant?” Judy asked.

  “He was sick and missed the sign-up so it’s too late by now. They probably don’t have room for him.”

  “Yes, they would,” Barbara argued. “It’s a Christmas pageant. There’s always room for one more angel.”

  “Or another shepherd boy,” Judy added. “Call Amy Braxton. She’s the director this year. I’m sure she’ll find a place for him.”

  “Okay. That takes care of Christmas Eve. What about Christmas Day? After services in the morning, we have the rest of the day to fill. I’d like to keep Vincent busy so he has less time to think about…about his mother.”

  “That’s probably wise,” Barbara noted, “but he’ll be thinking of her anyway.”

  “You could help us at the Towers. I could mention it to Penny when I call her,” Judy offered.

  When Ginger did not respond immediately, in part because Tyler was not particularly comfortable surrounded by the elderly and she was not sure if Vincent would be, either, Barbara interjected her thoughts. “You don’t have to volunteer on Christmas this year. Why don’t you think about what you did when your own children were little?”

  Ginger smiled, recalling memories of Christmas past that warmed her heart. “We didn’t do much. We always had our big dinner early, right after services. After that, we pretty much stayed home. Tyler always kept the fireplace going all day. We’d make popcorn over the fire, but that was before the microwave made it easier,” she added with a giggle. “Maybe we’d play some of the new board games the children got as gifts or we’d go outside. One of the children invariably got a new bicycle or roller skates or a skateboard.”

  She paused as her heart opened up to share a special memory she had tucked away. “One year we all got ice skates. That winter we were living in Ohio near a small lake that had frozen solid. We spent the afternoon skating and roasted hot dogs over a campfire. I think it was one of the best Christmases we ever had.”

  “The lake in Welles Park is frozen,” Judy noted.

  Barbara nodded. “And there are several campfire pits, so that leads me to ask two questions. Do you still have the popcorn maker for the fireplace and do you all have ice skates?”

  Ginger looked from Barbara to Judy and back to Barbara again. “They really allow open fires there?”

  “Really. Now what about those ice skates?”

  “We haven’t skated for years. I’m sure we gave them away, and I don’t even know if Vincent can skate. It doesn’t matter, though. I’d probably land flat on my face the minute I got to the ice.”

  Judy scoffed. “Not a chance. It’s like riding a bike. Once you learn, you never forget. Just don’t try a triple axel or anything fancy,” she teased.

  “I don’t even remember what the popcorn thingamabob is called, let alone where it might be. Do they even sell popcorn you don’t pop in a microwave?” Ginger asked.

  Barbara laughed. “It’s right in the supermarket on the shelf next to the microwave popcorn.”

  “They sell ice skates these days, too. Not at the super market, of course, but Marty’s Sporting Goods should hav
e them, if they haven’t sold out,” Judy suggested.

  “It would be an old-fashioned Christmas. A little quieter than what you’ve been used to in the last few years, but maybe that would be a good thing,” Barbara murmured.

  As Barbara’s words faded, Miss Grumley’s words echoed in Ginger’s mind again. She mulled them over, along with visions of the Christmas they might have. The joy of Christmas morning opening gifts under the tree. More joy and the songs of praise at morning services. Skating together. Roasting hot dogs. Playing games. Popping corn. Time for quiet. Time to surround themselves with love for one another—love that flowed from the Source of all love.

  Ginger grinned. “Thank you so much. It sounds so perfect I’m going to talk to Tyler about it tonight.”

  Barbara looked around the table and frowned. “In the meantime, we didn’t get very far with our work, did we?”

  Both Judy and Ginger looked at the small piles of decorated candy canes in front of them, looked back up at Barbara, and shrugged at the same time. “I guess we got so busy talking we forgot to keep working,” Judy admitted. “If we stop talking and concentrate on what we’re doing—”

  “Not a chance,” Ginger countered and quickly cleared the table. “Vincent and Tyler can help me do these tomorrow. Right now, we have a cinnamon bubble wreath to enjoy, and I doubt we’ll forget to do that while we’re talking,” she teased. She was gratified now she had actually found the time to run home this afternoon to make a bubble wreath for dessert. Whether or not Miss Grumley had ever been known as Bubbles, Ginger would always associate her with the smell of warm cinnamon cake and the very essence of Christmas.

  “John and I want to invite you all back to our house for New Year’s Eve after service in the park. We could all meet at the gazebo at seven, attend the service together and then come back to our house for some hot chocolate and goodies,” Barbara suggested. “We haven’t really followed up on the promise we made to spend time just being grand mothers, and I think John and Tyler would enjoy it, too. Please say you’ll come. It’ll be fun! Besides, I can’t think of a better way to end the old year and start a new one than spending time with all of you.”