This is a reprint from my memoir The Peach Pit: My side of the story. If you didn't get as far as chapter 28, "Important Family Holidays", this is the first part of it.
Christmas was a wonderful experience, but one aspect of that celebration I never understood until many years into adulthood. It concerned a particular decoration always displayed above the mantle during that festive season and which consisted of a silvered cluster of grapes and leaves. Mother referred to it as “Father’s Folly” but the term had no meaning to a youngster eager to rip into his gifts (and being the youngest, I got to distribute gifts to others before opening my own), and as the years passed, it became just another ornament in their Christmas collection. I finally learned of its origins after Father’s death when Mom related the following story.
It was an early Christmas for the young couple. They had two wee kids and were making a life for themselves in the little village of Thistletown. Dad was establishing himself as a builder and carpenter and Mom was being a new mom and making a home for us all. Then came Christmas Eve and Father got led astray.
A new friend went shopping with him for decorations, but before braving the crowds of last-minute shoppers, they decided they needed to stop in at the legion for a few beers. The upshot was that very late that night, Father ended up pounding on a shopkeeper’s door and buying the last piece of Christmas decor available before stumbling home to the somewhat chillier “bosom” of his family. "Father’s Folly" was given prominent position in our Christmases thereafter.
They were busy times, those holiday celebrations. Ask anyone raised in the 40s and 50s, but ask me especially and I’ll give you my version of “A Child’s Christmas In Wales” without the accent. People. There were more people coming through our house than I thought existed in the whole village.
On Christmas Day, we would have the great-aunts collected from east Toronto, as they were important in being the connecting relations for Mom & Dad. When Grandad left the farm, he was of course living with us. Then there might be other aunts and uncles from around the city with their kids. The table might seat 10 or 12 of us with a great turkey to be carved and fixings to be ladled out and crackers to be exploded and all the adults (well the menfolk at any rate) getting happier by the hour and Mom and the aunts bustling about in the kitchen.
After the last of the Christmas pudding and custard had been scraped up, there would be a general retirement to a fire-lit living room (well the menfolk at any rate) and we kids would be shooed off to play with our toys somewhere out of nuisance range while the cleaning up happened.
And that was a fair description from a child’s point of view — it just happened. The women did the washing up and clearing away and by the next morning, all was back to normal. Except that in a week’s time, the whole thing would be re-enacted at New Year’s, but this time in a somewhat gentler, slower rhythm, and loud noises from children were generally suppressed.
And you know that for the past 25 years Beverly and I have sent out Christmas cards with her graphics on the front and my poem on the inside, Last year I collected the works into a small volume called A Homemade Christmas figuring it would be the culmination of the practice. But we got all inspired again this year and did another. Most of you received it as an email or on Facebok, along with a hopeful few verses for the year ahead.
And that's how we are facing the new year - hopeful.
Hopeful and working to forestall Beverly's declining memory with upcoming appointments at a special local "memory clinic" at the hospital.
Hopeful and determined to keep me in condition to keep walking and exercising to forestall the creeping arthritis,
Hopeful and engaged in projects in our community, Beverly with her book club and me with mandates for AEDs in all apartments and condos and a Haiku walkway at the Gorge Pavilion.
All of those require participation with people in our wider community and that's always the best medicine for aging minds and bodies. We know there's no individual mastery; it's always a group project. Our heartfelt appreciation goes out to all of you in our community of friends. You are the space of inspiration and contribution from which we can step forth into the year ahead.