Elm Creek Quilts [08] The Christmas Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Sarah wiped off the long wooden table and draped the redand green tartan tablecloth over it. She placed two candlesticks in the center as Sylvia took clean cloth napkins from a drawer and tucked them into the holly wreath rings. Then Sylvia put the Santa Claus cookie jar between the candlesticks and declared that it made a fine centerpiece.

  “Too bad it isn’t full,” remarked Sarah, lifting the lid to be sure.

  “Even your sweet tooth couldn’t handle fifty-year-old cook-ies,” teased Sylvia, easing herself onto one of the benches. Images filled her mind, she and Claudia and her cousins swinging their feet as they sat on the bench dunking cookies into milk and leaving scuffmarks on the wooden floor with their shoes. A quick glance told her that time had worn away most of those marks, but some remained. She resisted the impulse to trace them with her fingertips.

  “Maybe we should drive out to the bakery and fill it up with Christmas cookies,” suggested Sarah.

  “If you could find a bakery open on Christmas Eve, and if I thought you could do it without sending my great-aunt Lucinda spinning in her grave. Store-bought cookies in her favorite cookie jar? My dear, that’s close to sacrilege in this house.”

  Sarah sat down on the opposite bench, amused. “I suppose you Bergstroms insisted upon homemade cookies.”

  “When you had a baker like Great-Aunt Lucinda in the family, you couldn’t tolerate anything less. She made all the good German Christmas cookies precisely the way her mother had taught her. Lebkuchen—that’s gingerbread; she made hers with grated almonds and candied orange peel. Aniseed cookies called anisplätzchen, and zimtsterne, cinnamon stars. She tried to keep that cookie jar filled from St. Nicholas Day through the Feast of the Three Kings, but we children ate them as fast as she could bake. It’s no wonder she left the apple strudel to the other bakers in the family.”

  “I made apple strudel once,” remarked Sarah. “You take the phyllo dough out of the box and place it on a cookie sheet, open up a can of apple pie filling, spread it all around, roll it up and bake it.”

  Sylvia cast her gaze to heaven. “Your generation will be forever remembered for its culinary ignorance.”

  “It was delicious,” protested Sarah. “Especially with a little vanilla frosting on top.”

  “That is not strudel,” said Sylvia. “Not real strudel, at any rate. If you had ever tasted my mother’s, even your damaged taste buds would perceive the difference.”

  “I’m willing to learn. Teach me how to make the real thing.”

  Sylvia waved a hand, dismissing the notion. “I haven’t made it since the war—the Second World War, before you get the idea that it was more recent. I would need at least a day to try to re-create the recipe from memory.”

  “You mean it isn’t written down?”

  “Of course not, dear. In those days, an accomplished cook didn’t measure cups and teaspoonfuls; it was a heaping handful of flour here, a dash of salt there, bake in a hot oven until done. The instructions were never as specific as cooks require today.”

  And yet somehow food had always tasted better then, when recipes were handed down from mother to daughter and stored in one’s memory rather than in a card file or on a computer.

  From down the hall, she heard the back door slam; a moment later, Sarah’s husband appeared in the doorway carrying two paper grocery sacks. “Looks nice,” he remarked, admiring the festive table. “Does this mean Christmas isn’t canceled after all?”

  “Not even Sylvia can cancel Christmas,” said Sarah. “No one can.”

  “Oliver Cromwell did,” remarked Sylvia, rising and taking one of the bags from Matt. “In the 1640s, when he came to power in England. He thought it was too decadent. But I’m no Oliver Cromwell, and Christmas at Elm Creek Manor was never canceled. You shouldn’t make assumptions based upon the lack of paper snowflakes and strings of colored lights. One doesn’t need decorations to have Christmas.”

  “But it helps.” To Matt, Sarah added, “Let’s go out soon and get a tree. To me, it doesn’t feel like Christmas unless it looks like Christmas.”

  “And sounds like Christmas,” replied Matt. “We need to put on some carols.”

  “I left my CD player in the foyer,” Sarah told him. He left the second bag of groceries on the counter and went to retrieve it, his curly blond head just clearing the doorframe. While they waited, Sylvia and Sarah put away the groceries Matt had purchased for their Christmas dinner, including sweet potatoes, cranberries, corn, apples, flour, onions, celery, and a contraband can of gravy Sylvia had deliberately crossed off the shopping list. Honestly. Canned gravy at Elm Creek Manor for Christmas dinner. When Sarah was not looking, Sylvia hid the gravy in a back corner of the pantry so that she would have no choice but to allow Sylvia to make theirs from scratch. Everything else they needed, they already had on hand. A turkey breast was defrosting on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, and Sylvia had already torn a loaf of bread into cubes for the stuffing. She had made a pumpkin pie earlier that morning, before the young people came down for breakfast.

  Sarah and Matt were quite right to attribute the holiday feeling to the sights and sounds of the season, but it was the smells and tastes of Christmas that flooded Sylvia with memories, transporting her to Christmases past as if she had lived those moments only yesterday and not decades ago. When Sylvia caught the scent of aniseed, no matter where she was or what the season, her thoughts immediately turned to Great Aunt Lucinda, turning out batches of savory cookies for her eager nieces and nephews. The smell of baking apples and cinnamon and pastry called to mind her mother, and her grandmother, and even her great-grandfather’s sister, Gerda Bergstrom, the first to make strudel in the kitchen of the farmhouse that would one day become Elm Creek Manor.

  Gerda Bergstrom had brought the strudel recipe over from Germany when she emigrated in the 1850s; all of the family stories agreed upon that. Whether she had created it herself or learned it from her mother, no one knew. Either way, everyone who tasted Gerda’s strudel affirmed that it was the most delicious they had ever tasted: the apples perfectly sliced and flavored with sugar and cinnamon, the pastry flaky and as light as air. Only a privileged few were ever treated to her strudel, and only at yuletide. All year she scrimped and saved her butter and egg money so that come December, she would have enough to purchase all the ingredients for the number of strudel she intended to make that year. She always made two for the family, which were devoured in a matter of minutes at breakfast Christmas morning. The others, sometimes as many as two dozen, she gave as gifts to her friends and to others whom she did not know as well, but who had earned her gratitude for a particular kindness they had shown her in the past year. Only one family other than her own received two strudels without fail every season: Dr. Jonathan Granger’s, most likely because his services were so necessary and his friendship so valuable in a town with only one doctor. “I give you simply the joy and hope of the season,” she would say as she offered a strudel to the lucky recipient, but neither the act nor the gift was as simple as she professed. Come Christmas Eve, when Gerda drove her brother’s horse and wagon from farm to farm and through the streets of their small town distributing her gifts, everyone knew exactly where they stood with her. Some were pleasantly surprised; others ruefully resolved to be friendlier toward the outspoken spinster in the year to come.

  As an unmarried woman living in her brother’s household, Gerda would have been determined not to become a burden. By all accounts she was a hard worker, cooking for the family and tending her brother’s children so her sister-in-law, a skilled seamstress, could earn extra money taking in sewing. Her strudel was already famous throughout the Elm Creek Valley by the time her nieces were old enough to learn her secrets. Later, when her nephews married, she taught their wives. Still, while every Bergstrom woman followed her instructions to the letter with results that would have been applauded in any other family, everyone agreed that Gerda’s strudel remained unmatched in every regard.

  After Gerd
a died, her cooking took on legendary attributes. More than one young bride marrying into the Berg-strom family fled to her room in tears after the strudel she had labored over for hours met with approving nods from her in-laws and fond reminiscences of the far superior crust or the more sublimely spiced apples Gerda had prepared long ago. Younger generations could only listen enviously as their elders recollected the Christmas feasts Gerda had created single-handedly in a kitchen that for most of her life boasted only a wood-burning stove and a root cellar. Once Sylvia was sent to her room for wondering aloud why Gerda could not have found any more productive use for her time than to haunt the kitchen peeling apples and stretching dough day and night, for that’s what she must have done in order to produce as many pastries as family legend would have it.

  But even though none could equal Gerda in the kitchen, every Bergstrom woman who learned her secret recipe had been armed with the power to win the admiration of young men, the respect of future mothers-in-law, and the envy of the other women whose family had been fortunate enough to receive a gift of the famous Bergstrom strudel.

  Then a time came when so many women of the family knew how to make it that the next generation could not be bothered to learn. Why should they, when another aunt or cousin could be relied upon to make one for the family’s Christmas breakfast and the several others necessary to fulfill Gerda’s tradition of giving them away to the dearest friends of the family? It went unnoticed that, with each aged aunt who passed on or each young wife who moved away with her new husband, a little of Gerda’s knowledge vanished into history.

  Sylvia’s mother was fortunate to learn from several of those who had been taught by Gerda herself: her mother-in-law and two of her husband’s aunts, Lydia and Lucinda. Eleanor must have mastered the recipe quickly, for in Sylvia’s earliest memories of watching the women of her family labor in the kitchen, her mother could handle the fragile dough as expertly as any Bergstrom-born.

  Eleanor was also a talented quilter, but not only because of the Bergstroms’ tutelage. She had learned to quilt as a child in New York City, and one of her most treasured possessions was the Crazy Quilt she had made with the help of her beloved nanny. When she first joined her husband’s family at Elm Creek Manor, she had impressed the other women with her equal skill in patchwork and appliqué, whereas the Bergstrom women tended to favor one or the other. There were other differences; none of the Bergstroms had ever made a Crazy Quilt, a heavily embroidered, often delicate work created more for decoration than warmth, and they frequently knew the same patterns by different names. Over the years, they shared their knowledge and each woman considered her store richer for the collaboration.

  Sylvia must have been seven or eight when Eleanor found Great-Aunt Lucinda’s Feathered Star blocks tucked away in the family scrap bag with the leftover green and red fabrics. “These are too finely made to use for scraps,” Eleanor protested when Lucinda explained that they had not found their way into the bag by mistake, for she had discarded them years ago. Her eyes were not as strong as they had once been, and she no longer felt capable of piecing together the tiny triangles as precisely as necessary. One of the aunts proposed stitching together the six blocks Lucinda had completed into a crib quilt, but after some discussion, all agreed that the eighteen-inch blocks were too large and overpowering to suit a baby’s coverlet. Eventually Eleanor decided to continue making a full-size Christmas quilt, but rather than create additional Feathered Stars that would be compared to Lucinda’s, she would appliqué holly wreaths and plumes to frame the older woman’s work.

  Eleanor worked on the quilt more consistently than Lucinda had, stitching the green holly leaves and deep red berries to ivory squares of fabric with tiny, meticulous stitches throughout the year. But although she did not put away the quilt at the end of the Christmas season, she progressed more slowly than Lucinda, for she could sew only for an hour or two at a time before headaches and fatigue forced her to set her handwork aside. Her health, which had never been robust, had begun a slow and steady decline after the birth of her youngest child and only son. Her condition had worsened markedly after the deaths of her mother and mother-in-law, less than a year apart. One by one she relinquished the activities she had once enjoyed: horseback riding, strolls along Elm Creek with Sylvia’s father, picnics and games in the north gardens dens. The aunts took over her household duties without alluding to the necessity for Eleanor to rest. Her love for her family shone as strongly as ever, defying the weakness of her body, so that the children sometimes almost forgot her infirmity.

  She was their beloved Mama. It did not really matter whether she played with them, or if she merely held them on her lap and told them stories. They were happy in her company.

  When December snows began to fall in Sylvia’s ninth year, she offered to help her mother finish the Christmas Quilt in time for the holiday. She had recently finished a floral appliqué sampler and had improved her stitches so much that she was eager to take on a more important project. Her mother agreed, adding with a rueful laugh that without Sylvia’s help, she might be obliged to give up as Lucinda had done.

  Sylvia could not bear the thought of that, not after her mother had worked so hard to create such beautiful holly wreaths and sprays, so lifelike that Sylvia half-expected them to stir in the breeze. To spare her mother the effort, she traced her mother’s leaf template onto stiff paper, cut out the shapes, paired them with pieces of green fabric, and basted the raw edges down until the fabric conformed to the paper.

  To make the berries, she placed a dime on the wrong side of a circle of fabric a quarter inch larger in diameter, then held the dime in place as she took small running stitches in the fabric circle all the way around the edge, leaving longer thread tails at the beginning and the end. She gently pulled the threads, drawing the fabric circle around the dime, and pressed with a hot iron. After loosening the threads to slip out the coin, she basted the edges of the fabric into a circle the size of a dime with perfectly smooth edges. All that remained for her mother to do was baste the leaves and berries in place on the background fabric and appliqué them securely.

  Even with Sylvia’s help, her mother tired easily and often rested with her sewing on her lap, watching two-year-old Richard play or supervising Claudia as she strung popcorn, berries, and nuts for the Christmas tree. Uncle William and his wife had needed four hours to choose a tree the previous year, which according to Sylvia’s father was a new record. The delay forced the family to rush to finish decorating the tree before bedtime. Sylvia had overheard some speculation that Uncle William and his bride had not spent all that time searching for a tree, but she could not imagine what else they might have been doing out there all alone in the snowy woods.

  Maybe they had gotten lost. In any event, Claudia was determined to be ready for an even longer search this year by preparing the decorations in advance.

  Two days before Christmas, Great-Aunt Lydia announced her intention to make apple strudel that day, and anyone who wished to help would be welcome. Despite her weariness, Sylvia’s mother took an interest. “How many do you plan to make?” she asked.

  “Four,” said Lydia. “One for us and three for the usual friends.”

  “Only four?” asked Eleanor. The family’s interest in Gerda’s tradition had diminished over the years as they had found other ways to express their affection and gratitude to their friends and neighbors. Quilted and knitted gifts were popular, but Sylvia had overheard Great-Aunt Lucinda tell Lydia that most families in the Elm Creek Valley would be grateful to find coal in their stockings this year. “Aunt Gerda always said the simple gifts were best,” she had added, “but this year, simple is all most folks will be able to manage, and joy and hope may be in short supply.”

  They had been careful to speak of such things out of Eleanor’s hearing, and now, confronted with her surprise, Lucinda and Lydia exchanged a look and Sylvia grew still. Her father and the other adults did their best to shield Eleanor and the children from
distressing news, but Sylvia had perfected the art of eavesdropping on her elders. She knew what concerned her aunts, even if she did not entirely understand the cause. In October, the First Bank of Waterford had lost all the family’s money along with the savings of its other customers.

  For reasons that did not seem fair to Sylvia, a larger bank in a far-off city had called in a debt and had cleared out the Waterford bank vault in order to pay its own customers. Her father said that this was happening throughout the nation—banks failing, factories closing, everywhere men losing their means of earning a living. Rich men leaped to their deaths from skyscrapers rather than endure bankruptcy, and poor men sold apples on street corners.

  Sylvia’s mother knew what was happening around the country because the family could not hide the newspaper or turn off the radio without explaining why. What she did not know—what her husband had tried to conceal from her—was how seriously their own family had been affected. Eleanor did not know that their savings had been lost, or that the family business had not generated any income for months. The wealth of most of their former customers had been wiped out in the stock market crash. No one had the money to spend on luxuries like expensive horses. The Bergstroms would get by because they were moderately self-sufficient; they owned their own land and thus did not have to pay a mortgage, and they grew some of their own food. They had ample wood from their forest to heat the home if their supply of coal ran out before spring. The manor was full of desirable possessions they could use to pay off Eleanor’s doctor bills and barter for whatever else they needed in town. But for the first time since Gerda Bergstrom’s day, the family had to watch every penny. Lydia’s expenditures on white flour, sugar, and cinnamon, a trifle any other Christmas, had already led to one argument with some of the men of the household.