And there, right in the middle of the celebrants was Leo Boville, as Mary Louise would have said, “grinnin’ like a chessie cat.” To have a son like Purdy was, well, somethin’ special. And to share him with the Northland Acres family at Christmas was, well, somethin’ very special indeed.
So Purdy played his role. He shook hands, he hugged, he told jokes, he shared memories, he handed out gifts wrapped in tissue paper, white for the ladies, colored for the gentlemen.
When he took Jenny Dishaw’s hand to shake it, he did so gently to protect the brittle bones beneath her thin, white skin. He asked Bert Madden whatever became of Larry Burns and was told Larry, now retired, had risen to foreman of the pulp mill. “You coulda been there, too, boy,” he was reminded.
Melrose Doran told him she had seen him in an old Western movie on channel 46. “Was I any good?” he asked.
“You was always a good boy, Purdy.”
“No, I mean was I a good actor in that movie?”
“All you Boville kids was good. Never got in any trouble at all. Your ma and pa seen to that.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Doran. Merry Christmas.”
And so he moved from person to person in his disguise, but fooling no one as to his identity, thanks to Leo’s inability to keep a secret. And when the party was over, he helped his dad back to his apartment.
While Leo rested in his La-Z-Boy, Purdy went to the bedroom to change his clothes. When he returned to the living room, Leo was asleep. He thought about putting him to bed, but decided against it. Instead, he went to the refrigerator, took out a can of Budweiser and a pickled Polish sausage, and put them on the eating counter in the kitchen, next to the new sweater wrapped in red tissue paper he had bought at Macy’s in “New York City.”
He would sleep at the Comfort Inn and come back to say goodbye in the morning, Christmas morning. Then he would take a cab to Green Bay and catch a flight to New York, through Minneapolis.
Another birthday had come and gone. He was a year older and some wiser. The burden of growing older was somewhat compensated by growing wiser, he thought.
As a character in a play, Purdy had joked, “Old age is all in your head … and your neck … and your shoulders … and hips … and knees … and …” It was a good line and always brought a laugh. He knew he would feel the truth of it as he squeezed into his seat in the Northwest commuter plane tomorrow.
He walked down the corridor, past the closed doors of the “children” all nestled snug in their beds or La-Z-Boys. He hoped that sugar plums danced in their heads. He had given them a little Christmas magic one more time. And just as in the theater when a performer gives magic, the audience had returned it.
On various stages he had been Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley, and all three of Dickens’ ghosts. Now as he walked past the Christmas tree and the piano in the commons area of Northland Acres Retirement Village, right in the middle of Adolph Schmeling’s old cornfield, he whispered his favorite line from the character he had never played, “God bless us … everyone.”
Grandfather Liu’s Christmas Gift
THE BRAINS OF old men are filled with stories, stories of triumph and stories of tragedy. Most they are eager to tell over and over. But some they keep locked deep inside their memory bank.
It took the key of Christmas to unlock Grandfather Liu’s hidden memory.
Xiang Liu left Beijing for America when he was twenty-two years old. A brilliant student, he had been recommended by his mathematics professors in China to the Department of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Xiang was awarded a teaching assistantship and a place in the graduate program. Although Xiang intended to return to China on the completion of his degree and assured his father he would, unforeseen persons and opportunities changed the direction of his life.
Xiang’s first assignment at Wisconsin was to lead a discussion section for Introduction to Statistics. The course was filled with undergraduates for whom the language of statistics was as unfamiliar as was Xiang’s native language. To his distress, Xiang soon discovered his English language teachers in Beijing had evaluated his ability to communicate in English much higher than did his American students. After his distorted attempts to answer students’ questions about “measures of central tendency,” a swarm of confused students buzzed into his office with more questions. Xiang tried again with minimal improvement. So the students, after checking and finding all other discussion sections for the required course filled, accepted their fates, as students must so often do.
Fortunately, one of the students in Xiang’s section was Su Ming, who had an ear and a tongue for turning a Chinese-flavored pronunciation into an understandable English word. Her cue for “translation needed” was the simultaneous turning of thirty heads in her direction, whereupon she improved upon Xiang’s rough approximations while Xiang nodded his head appreciatively. The students were amused by this “team teaching,” which gave comic relief to an otherwise exasperating subject matter. Better yet, Xiang gave them all high grades for fear the ignorance displayed in their test booklets was the result of his inability to master English pronunciation and syntax and not their failure to learn statistics. Not one student from his section dropped the course after six-week exam grades were posted, a record for the Department of Statistics.
Su Ming had lived in Madison all her life. After graduating from North High School, she attended the university off and on and worked in the restaurant owned and managed by her father, Henry, and her mother, Lilly. The restaurant was named The Dragon’s Garden and was, depending on the travel experiences of the reviewer, reported to serve the most authentic Chinese food in Wisconsin, the USA, or possibly the whole world—and if not the most authentic, certainly the most. The Dragon’s Garden was filled to capacity every noon for the all-you-can-eat buffet. Xiang ate there nearly every day, and when his eyes met Su Ming’s as she cleared a table near his or restacked the buffet table, he blushed.
In time Xiang Liu finished his degree, improved his English, and was offered a post-doctoral fellowship in his department. By then, Henry Ming had died, and Lilly had turned the restaurant over to Su and returned to what family she had left in Beijing. And Xiang’s shyness in the presence of Su had dissipated enough for him to propose in the old-fashioned American style, on one knee. Su corrected his pronunciation of “marry” and accepted. Xiang turned down the offer of a post-doc and went to work as the new owner-manager of The Dragon’s Garden, where he made more money in three months than he would have in three years in the Department of Statistics.
Xiang and Su had a daughter, Li, and a son, Chan, whom they nicknamed Sam after Xiang’s favorite symbol of American strength. Only one person was missing from Xiang’s life. It was the man who had been both father and mother to him the first twenty-two years of his life. So again, Xiang wrote his father in Beijing, “Come to America, my father. You will find a good life here with my family which is also your family. And now you have a grandson who will benefit from your wisdom. We all want you here in America with us, Father.”
To Xiang’s surprise and delight, his father, after years of chewing on the decision and declining his son’s invitations, wrote that he would come. To his neighbors and friends in Beijing, he announced that he was leaving for America. “An old man should be near his son,” he proclaimed. Then he added, “And now his son’s son.” He excluded his son’s wife and daughter because only sons were important in the Liu family tradition. Females, he believed, were decorative and useful, but not the strength of a family.
So Xiang flew from Madison to Chicago and then to Beijing on a United Airlines flight to fetch his father “home.”
Weeks later, Su received a telephone call from Xiang in Beijing. Everything was in order there, and they would arrive in Madison the following week. “How are you managing with the children and the restaurant?” he asked. And did she miss him as much as he missed her? Su was greatly relieved by the call and assured her husband that all was well in Madison, and,
yes, she did miss him and “Please hurry home.”
The following week, Su sat with Li and Sam in the waiting area for United Airlines flights from Chicago to Madison. She was happy her husband was almost home, yet apprehensive about the addition of her father-in-law to their household. He had never been to the United States, and she doubted he would find everything to his liking. By pre-arrangement, Grandfather Liu would care for the children, and Su would spend more time in the restaurant business. She and Xiang had discussed opening a Dragon’s Garden II on the east side of town. She remembered Xiang once describing his father as a “pensive man with a shadow on his heart,” an unusually poetic description for a statistician to make. How would such a man fit in?
Li was the first to see her father emerging from the plane, followed closely by an older carbon copy. The two paused, and Xiang peered into the assembled people peering back. Li tugged at her mother’s skirt and pointed. “Go to them,” Su told her, “and do as we practiced.” On cue the girl ran to her father and grandfather and, in perfect Chinese dialect, greeted them.
“Welcome home, Father and Grandfather. Take my hand, Grandfather. We have been waiting a long time for you. Come and meet my mother and brother.” It was a warm greeting by a precocious four-year-old. And Grandfather was astonished by this muffin who was the miniature in voice, movement, appearance, and spirit of her long-deceased grandmother. The resemblance was remarkable, and the old man’s consternation did not go unnoticed by his daughter-in-law.
Grandfather Liu spoke only a little English when he landed at the Madison airport. Fortunately, Xiang and Su moved easily from one language to the other, and they had insisted that Li be bilingual as well. Sam, of course, still communicated in whoops and hollers, whines and sniffles. So Li took it upon herself to teach her grandfather English and was not only doing well with this endeavor, but was also endearing herself to him as they shared the household chores and the parenting of Sam.
After two months with the Xiang Liu family in America, Grandfather Liu concluded that Chan, or Sam as he was called, was unlikely ever to bring honor to the family. The boy was obstinate, resembled his mother, and showed none of the superior intelligence he remembered Xiang showing at that age. Li, on the other hand, was a piece of fruit worthy to grace any family tree. She was bright, beautiful, confident, and forthright. Her sensitivity to those around her was often in conflict with her penchant for speaking her mind. It was this contradiction in her grandmother that provoked the quarrel that once again tortured his dreams and ruptured his sleep. If only there had been no sparks, he thought. And then, and no straw.
As the bond between grandfather and granddaughter strengthened, so too did the memories he had repressed for years. The girl’s likeness to Xiang’s mother was eerie. He lay awake long hours every night replaying disquieting events from the past. Often he slept only to awaken at two or three o’clock in the morning, anxious and unsettled. “Why is it I can find no forgiveness for myself?” he fretted.
His father’s unsettled state went unnoticed by Xiang. “We are now a happy family,” he told Su. “We are together in America.” She said nothing, but Su knew otherwise.
The old man is not happy, she thought. There is a restless wind that inhabits his spirit, a bad dream from which he cannot awaken. He carries a burden… I wish I knew…
The passage of time that so often heals had no effect on Grandfather’s mood. His food, delivered from The Dragon’s Garden, was not authentic Chinese as the locals believed. He missed his neighbors, his bed remained unfriendly to his aging body, and the natural commotion of a young American family was jarring to him. His son had neither time nor inclination to hear him talk of the “old days” in China, how the country was being corrupted by the government, and how the importation of Western ways was leading Chinese youth away from the teachings of Confucius. Most of all, Li, whom he loved dearly, was nonetheless a specter, a constant reminder of a psychological need for a forgiveness that could never be given.
As winter shouldered autumn away, pieces of warm weather slipped away under each setting sun, and leaves with streaks and patches of orange, yellow, and red grew brittle and fell from their branches. The Christmas season was approaching, and Su was certain the spirit of Christmas would relieve her father-in-law’s melancholy. She had been raised a Catholic by Henry and Lilly, and Li and Sam were baptized in that faith. Xiang had never embraced Christianity and long ago had forgotten most of the teachings of Confucius. He was neither a believer nor a non-believer, simply a questioner and non-joiner. Nonetheless, he agreed with Su that in America, Christmas was a time for celebration and always closed The Dragon’s Garden Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the only closures of the year.
Su loved all of the Christmas stories and songs, religious and non-religious. They all, she believed, contributed to the overall “Christmas Spirit,” that intangible excitement in the air that generates anticipation, joy, tolerance, fellowship, and goodwill among people of all faiths.
Furthermore, she insisted that this spirit permeate the Liu household for a least a week before the big day itself. “You will not whine, not argue, not fight, not be disagreeable in any way, shape, or form. You will be nice to each other for one week … or else!” Even Sam got the message. Sadly, Grandfather did not.
If anything, Grandfather grew more sullen. Innocently, Li told him stories of Baby Jesus born in a manger, angels appearing to shepherds, wise men following a star to the infant, stories her mother had told her. In response he quoted sayings of Confucius, which were as incomprehensible to Li as her stories were to him. When she sang Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer to him, he denounced the animal as a fabrication of Western capitalists. The bond between them was severely strained.
Quickly for Su and Xiang, but agonizingly slowly for the children, December 24th arrived. The restaurant was closed after the noon buffet, and Xiang and Su hurried home for their own holiday celebration. The tree, a tall and bushy spruce purchased at Brennan’s Market on University Avenue, was trimmed and sparkled in one corner of the living room. The dinner table was dressed with a Christmas cloth and red and green candles. One gift for each child was under the tree. Santa would come that night, but Henry and Lilly had always given Su a “parents’ present” Christmas Eve, and she continued the tradition with her own children.
It was a warm, jolly evening with good food, plum wine, laughter, teasing, and presents, even a new robe for Grandfather, which he accepted graciously with apologies for not reciprocating with gifts of his own. Su noticed his mood lightening as the evening progressed. She was more than ever convinced of the power of the Spirit of Christmas to move people to higher planes of consciousness and empathy for one another. She was convinced that Charles Dickens must have known, rather than created, Ebeneezer Scrooge.
About ten o’clock Su offered to tidy the kitchen and living room for the arrival of Santa and shooed the others to their beds. They moved sleepily at her urging. When she was certain the children were entertaining visions of sugarplums, she placed their presents under the tree, one side for Li, the other for Sam. She wondered why they had bothered to christen him. Then she headed for bed in the dark, guided by Xiang’s plum-wine snores.
As she neared the door to Grandfather’s room, she saw his light was on. Buoyed by her personal Christmas spirit and perhaps the plum wine, she tapped on his door. Startled, Grandfather opened the door only enough to see Su. He hesitated, then opened the door wide enough for her to enter. She stepped to the small armchair next to the bed and sat. Then she pointed to his bed and motioned for Grandfather to sit also. He did.
Su look closely at the man whose face and posture were those of a man older than his actual years. He fingered a piece of jewelry, a necklace. There were tears on both cheeks, and his watery eyes were fixed on the necklace.
“This necklace … ,” he began, “is missing a green bead. This necklace … a gift that gave misery instead of intended joy.” He paused, head bent floorward, and his
tears dropped upon his hands and the necklace. “Green jade embossed with gold, the only one of its kind on the necklace, strung as the centerpiece. And with it went my peace and my love.” One of his hands left the necklace and moved to cover his face. His shoulders hunched forward, and he sat silent.
“Tell me, Grandfather Liu,” Su said softly. “Tell me. It is time to share your burden. Does not Confucius say that only through letting others help can a burden be lightened?”
Grandfather let his hand drop from his face back to the necklace. He fingered the necklace as a rosary might be fingered, one bead at a time. He raised his head, straightened his shoulders, and looked directly into the eyes of his daughter-in-law. And in her eyes he saw compassion and true caring. He dropped his defenses and at the same time his prejudice that only men could shape the history of a family. After a moment, he began to speak slowly and with an articulateness that revealed his story had been repeated to himself many times over many years.
“I was a young man, perhaps too young to take a wife whose temper was the equal of her beauty. Look at your daughter, Li, and see her loveliness. We were in love, filled with youthful passions, but lacking in experience and wisdom.
“We farmed a small piece of land owned by the government. Our profit was little, and most of it was returned for rent of our small plot and for use of the miserable quarters we were given to live in. We were poor, but no poorer than the factory workers in nearby Beijing. And our young love and dreams for a better future gave us happiness and hope.
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