THE NIGHT WE HEARD SANTA ON THE ROOF!

Christmas was always a very special time in our house and one of the best Christmases ever was the one when all the cousins came to stay. We were living at my grandparent's house in Stratford Ontario— Mom, my little sister Jeannie and me — when my father was overseas serving as an army chaplain in a field hospital in Holland. Every Christmas at Grandpa's was full of fun. The aunts and uncles and cousins came from various parts of Ontario and the house was full of laughter and good cheer.

That particular Christmas, because of the crowd, my cousins and I were allowed to sleep in the sun porch room. As usual, we stayed up late, played monopoly and crochinole and Chinese checkers. We had our special Christmas treat: glasses of sparkling ginger-ale (our family's 'champagne') and ate lots of the delicious goodies Mom and Grandma had backed. We sang carols, told stories and finally we were tucked into bed.

Some time after midnight I was wakened by a sound on the roof. I heard jingling bells and a loud "Hohoho!" My cousins woke up too when we heard the stomping of footsteps on the roof. Santa Claus! He was right on the sun porch roof getting ready to come down our chimney to deliver the toys. None of us dared make a sound and ducked under the covers pretending to be asleep.

Sure enough, the next morning there were lots of toys under the tree. Santa had really come! And we had heard him! I could hardly wait for school to resume after the holidays so I could tell my classmates.

The first day back I went to school bursting with excitement. As I entered my classroom I announced, "Santa Claus came to our house. We heard him on the roof!"

"What?" scoffed one of the older boys. "Don't you know that Santa is a fake? He's just pretend. You couldn't possibly have heard him!"

I was crushed! When I went home for lunch that day I was in tears. "This boy in my class says that Santa isn't real!" I sobbed.

My mom was sympathetic but she admitted to me  that Santa really was just a myth.

"I heard him!" I insisted. "We heard him up on the roof on Christmas night!"
"That was Uncle Frank pretending to be Santa Claus," my mother explained.

For me, it was one of my biggest disappointments. I was ten years old, and my fantasy world was shattered forever. I've never forgotten it.

I always tried to keep the myth of Santa Claus alive for my own children for as long as I could. And when I worked as a daycare supervisor some years ago, we always made the Christmas celebrations special for the children.  I'd say "Let's pretend about Santa Claus," and we'd tell the time-worn Christmas fable of jolly old St. Nick and his sleigh full of toys pulled by the reindeer. I still think the Santa Claus tradition is one of the most fun parts of Christmas!

CHRISTMAS ON A SHOESTRING.

 

Steve and Alex with one of the Yorkies at our Stewart Ave. house

Here it is, that Jolly Old Season again and true to tradition my bank account is running on empty and I haven’t even started shopping yet. It’s just a fact of life that happens when one lives on an extremely low-income budget. Somehow, things always work out alright though. I’ve had lots of experience organizing gala Christmas celebrations on a shoestring.

I recall those “hard times” back in the ’70’s when I was a divorced single mom struggling to support two kids on a miniscule salary as a daycare teacher. My boyfriend and I decided to cut the costs by moving into a big house which we shared with a variety of other equally poor lodgers and assorted dogs and cats.

My boyfriend was on the lam from the American army as this was during the Viet Nam war so any work he had was under-the-table at a car wash. The other lodgers were young college students, and an occasional deserter or wayward hippie that took shelter with us. We never turned anyone away and each guest or tenant, no matter how impoverished, would participate by helping with cooking, sharing expenses and whatever. We all learned how to make do with very little and we were a happy, carefree gang.

The first year we moved in, with our very sparse budget, we were still determined to make the best of it for the Christmas season. After all, it isn’t Christmas without parties, decorations and presents. So all of us got together and cut out coloured tissue paper snowflakes to decorate the windows. We hung lights and somehow managed to get a Christmas tree which we decorated with traditional balls and tinsel as well as strings of popcorn. But what to do for presents?

It happened that I had a lot of material goods brought from my past life, so I sorted through the china tea-cups, jewelery and other items that I had stored away, carefully picking just the right gift for each of my friends. The girls in the house baked Christmas goodies and the old house was full of the delicious, familiar smells of the holidays. The whole motley crew enjoyed a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. It was a special Christmas because it wasn’t in the least bit ‘commercial’. Everything we had made or chosen from our own belongings to give away. It gave Christmas a new, special meaning.

There were a few other Christmases on a shoestring too, during those years. Once I remember us having a box of odds and ends: ribbons, tinsel, shiny paper, glue, sparkles and various artsy craftsy thing and each guest who came visiting had to make a decoration for the Christmas tree. One year my daughter and I made gingerbread houses for all our friends. Another time we had a Christmas cookie contest and decorated sugar cookies cut in various festive shapes which we hung on the Christmas tree. The ornamental cookies were so pretty we decided to keep them for the next year. But alas! The following Christmas when I opened the box up, the mice had eaten all the cookie ornaments!

I recall as a kid, my Mom used to make whole wardrobes for our Christmas dolls, and sew all our holiday clothes too. My parents didn’t have a lot of money but there were always plenty of gifts under the tree, and lots of goodies to eat. Christmas was a jolly time spent with family and friends. I guess those early days taught me how to have Christmas on a shoestring and in a way, those Christmases are the most memorable

 

*   *   *

TIME FOR CHRISTMAS

 

 

 

I started writing at an early age.  By the time I was fifteen I had a stack of novellas handwritten in textbooks.  Christmas was coming and what I wanted most was a typewriter.  I put out hints to my parents and spent many hours daydreaming about my typewriter, imagining how it would change my life.  My dream was to becoming a newspaper journalist.  I went to sleep at night imagining the sound of keys tapping out the 10,000 words of my next novel.  If only I had a typewriter: one with a bell that clanged when you threw the platen across, keys that smacked in the rhythm of the words I would write, and a ribbon that printed in both black or red.

 

Imagine my deep disappointment when Christmas morning came and there was no typewriter among the presents, just a small, rectangular gift-wrapped box from Mom and Dad.  Inside was a gold wristwatch with an expandable wrist band and dainty oval face.  Mom saw I was disappointed. “It’s a very expensive watch,” she said. “We found it at a pawnshop.  Although it isn’t new, it’s almost like new and it’s the best make of watch there is.”

 

My parents didn’t realize how much I hated watches, the dreaded symbol of the ‘curfew’ imposed on us teenage kids, a restriction on my adventurous spirit. Now I’d have no excuse for being late. I’d turn into the White Rabbit, always looking at my watch to see what time it was!

 

I felt guilty for being so ungrateful and my Christmas day was spoiled...until later I went up to my room and there on my table was an Underwood typewriter, exactly the kind that my writer-hero Ernest Hemingway used.

 

I’m a published writer now.  I have a computer, and the keyboard doesn’t make that exciting loud clacking sound like the old Underwood did, but it still produces a gentle click to the rhythm of the words I type.  And in my jewellery box, I have a gold watch with an expandable wristband and dainty oval face, one almost exactly like the watch my parents gave me that Christmas so many years ago. Except this wristwatch is one that belonged to my mother.  Every time I look at it, I’m reminded of her, and of that Christmas.

 

"FAMILY PHOTOS: A View of Christmases Through the Years"

My mother enjoyed photography as a hobby. Our family albums are crammed with black and white snaps taken with her Brownie box camera, some hand-tinted with pastel colours. browsing through them, I am transported back in time to Christmases past.

The first Christmas photos, Estevan Saskachewan., I'm an infant in a wicker pram, wearing an angora bonnet. My mother's tidy handwriting on the back says "Ruthie, six months old. She's wearing the bonnet Aunt Edie sent from Wales." In another, I'm propped up in a wooden box on the back of a sled. My father, dressed in his fedora hat and overcoat is posed beside me. In Dad's unique, tight handwriting, is written: "Ruthie's first sleigh ride. I made the sleigh."

Next year, I'm an 18 month old dumpling, podgy as a little snowman in knitted leggings, sweater and bunny-ear hat, knit by Mom. Next to this picture is one of a Christmas tree piled with decorations I can remember using for years to come, and piles of gifts including a doll in a pram and pictures books. A few years later, another Christmas tree, this time with identical dolls sitting in high chairs and a Red-Rover sled with shiny runners. By now I have a little sister, so each year Santa brought us identical gifts. She liked dolls better than I did though. I preferred paper-dolls.

There is always a lot of snow in these pictures: Lloyminster,Saskachewan. My pal Albert and I, age six, standing arm in arm in the back yard under bare-limbed trees with snow up to the tops of our galoshes. Me wearing the coat Mom had made me out of a hand-me-down: moss green wool trimmed with Persian lamb from one of her old coats. I'm still wearing that coat three years later in another photo, this one taken by a photographer for Santa, the year we went to Toronto to see the Sant Claus parade. This photo invokes clear and rather unpleasant memories of that Christmas.

I was nine then. We had moved from the Prairies to Brantford Ontario and then to Stratford when my father was called up as an army chaplain. We lived at Grandpa and Grandma's house while Dad was overseas. In a photo she had taken to send Dad, my mother stands on the front porch steps wearing an elegant crepe dress, her hair neatly coiffed in the fashion of the '40's, smiling.
Behind her, on the door, is a big silver bell with red writing: "Merry Christmas". Those Christmases without Dad must have been lonely for her, but she never showed us anything but her sweet smile. Christmas at my Grandparent's house was a joyful, exciting event with visiting relatives who arrived by train from other parts of Ontario, and a house full of cousins and Christmas cheer.

That particular Christmas, Grandpa promised us we could go to Toronto to see the famous Santa Claus parade. It would be a special Christmas outing for the whole family. We would take the train in the morning and return that night. It was an adventure I had longed for and I was beside myself with excitement for days before the scheduled departure.

Then, on the eve of our journey, I took ill with the flu. I was very sick, but determined not to miss the trip. I don't remember the train trip or the Santa Claus parade. I look at myself in the photo, puffy-cheeked and pale, totally wretched, sitting on Santa's knee unable to smile. I still haven't forgotten how ill I was that day, and how disappointing it was to have such a special outing spoiled.

The next year's Christmas photo shows us standing on Grandpa's steps with my Dad who is beaming proudly in his army great-coat and beret. My little sister Jeanie is on one side of him. She has a doll in her hand. Twelve-year-old me stands on the other side of him, skinny, long-legged and solemn. Behind us is a spangled sign that says: "Welcome Home!".

That was our last Christmas in Ontario. The following year we took the train across Canada and made our new home in British Columbia where Christmas wasn't always white, although I can still remember skating on the Lagoon and singing carols door-to-door in the snow.

Wherever we were, Christmas was always special in our family, with beautiful decorations, the aroma of Christmas baking, pine logs on the fire; Christmas music, and a tree we always decorated together with heaps of surprises wrapped in colourful paper under it. Santa always found us, and filled our stockings, even when my sister and I were grown up and had little ones of our own.

In her photographs, my Mother has captured all these memorable times and left us this legacy of Christmas with the Family. Christmases Past.

SAYING GOODBYE

Dora's Sunset (Poros, Greece)

DORA’S SUNSET

(written on Poros Greece in memory of my friend Dora Preston)

The night I learn you had left us,

I walk the seaside promenade

by Poros’ harbour

and pause, remembering.

The sunset has turned the sea

into a pool of crimson

And against the blazing sky

a four-masted sailing ship

lies at anchor

I remember you, the free spirit,

You who wore purple

and buttercup yellow.

You danced in floral frocks,

amused us with funny stories

about an old lady named Clover.

I still hear your sweet voice,

singing, laughing.

I search that crimson sunset sky,

say prayers, remember you.

The next day, on Kanali beach,

I wade into the water.

A gull soars overhead,

a small white bird circling

as though it is watching me.

My tears mix with the sea salt.

Is it your spirit

soaring over the blue Aegean sea?

I hear the gentle trill of your voice,

telling me not to cry.

How could it be that you are gone,

taken from us too soon?

Dora, you will always be remembered.

 Since I posted the blog about my friends taking ill and some passing away,  my friend Anne passed the end of May, and when I was in Greece the end of June, my dear friend Dora passed.  That was a real shock to all of us and we were devastated. (How Fragile Life Is).

Before I went to Greece, I visited my cousin Shiela who had the stroke last November and it was so sad to see her lying on her back in a care-home bed unable to sit up or stand. She was always an independent woman and loved spending time with her family. It is not likely she will recover. 

These are the frailties of life we must all face, but it leaves me so sad to think of these dear friends who have been taken.

None of them will be forgotten!

REMEMBERING

Rev. Capt. R. Frederick Filer M.B.E.

This morning in my Write from the Heart memoir writing group, they were asked to write something from the prompt "I Remember..."  Because tomorrow is November 11, a time to remember the men and women who fought in the wars past and present, several people remembered back to these times in their childhoods.  At this time of year, I always think of my Dad, who was a chaplain in the army during WW II.  This is what I wrote:

I remember the day my Dad came home from The War.  We were living at grandpa's house on Cobourg Street in Stratford Ontario where my mother, sister and I had stayed all the time dad was overseas.  My grandma had died not long before the war ended.  The War was a big part of our lives.  Every kid in school had at least one family member: father, uncle, grandpa or brother, fighting overseas.  Almost on a daily basis someone in the school would learn their loved one had been wounded or killed.  I was lucky. My dad was coming home from The War.

During the four years he was overseas, every night we'd sit at the table in grandma's kitchen and listen to the BBC news on the radio.  I still remember that static, far-away sound of the news-caster's voice.  On the wall by the table was a big map, and we'd stick pins in it to show us where The Action was.  There was a special pin marking the place were Dad was serving as a chaplain in the #10 army field hospital in Holland.

I thought of my dad often during those years when he was away.  I remember going to Kingston with my mom and sister just before he was shipped overseas, and his last visit to Stratford when we went as a family for a portrait, dad looking so handsome in his arm uniform wearing his captain's hat and clerical collar.  I was about 9 then and my dad was very special to me.  I remember, going back to my early childhood living on the prairies, walking with my dad down country roads or visiting farm houses where he knew people from his congregation. I have a picture of myself, age 3, with dad holding me up to sit on a fence so I could pet the sheep.  I remember my dad working in his garden, and preaching on Sundays, and telling me stories about his life when he was a boy in Wales, and later working in the coal mines in Caerphilly from when he was 14 to when he immigrated to Canada and met my mom.  I had missed my dad so much, and when he was going to arrive home at last, I was more excited than at any other time.

And then, he came home.  But it wasn't the same dad I remembered.  He was a different dad, still handsome in his officer's uniform, a bit thinner and perhaps more careworn.  But he was a stranger.  I remember running to my room, sobbing uncontrollably, partly from happiness and relief at having him back again, but also for reasons unknown to me then.  I didn't realize til years later just why I had cried. Now I understand it was that he was 'different' because of all he had seen and lived through.  I remember later reading through piles of letters he had saved sent to him by parents and loved ones of young men he had buried or who had been wounded.  My dad's job as chaplain had been to comfort the dead and dying and their families.  He had lived through terrifying and devastating experiences.  Once, he told us, a buzz bomb had stopped buzzing right over the hospital. He had thrown himself to the floor and prayed.  And thankfully, the bomb exploded somewhere farther away.  All these experiences had 'changed' my dad.  But really, deep down he was still the same dad I had known before The War, full of compassion and love and gentleness.  He won the MBE for his honorable service at the army hospital.  And he won the respect and love of everyone he met.

So on this Remembrance Day I still think of that day so many years ago when he returned from the war, that 'stranger', but still he was my Dad.  And I think of all the children in the world who are waiting for their Dads to come home from The War, and pray they get back home safely.