Stories From Grandmother's Knee
By Robert Adair Wilson
Copyright 2010 Robert Adair Wilson - Cover by Leslie Slova Wilson
Published by Robert Adair Wilson at Smashwords
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On Sunday mornings Grandmother likes to sit in the living room in her favourite wingback chair. With her feet on overstuffed cushions in front of a roaring December fire, she listens to Bing Crosby croon "White Christmas" from an old record collection. The rest of the family goes to church while Grandmother "catches up on her rest" and dreams about Christmases just like the ones she used to know. When Shawn has the flu he stays home with his Grandmother. They sit snuggled and buttered in the glow of lamplight and Christmas decorations with embroidery and knitting billowing out from her chair, and Grandmother tells stories of Christmases long ago on the Gulf Islands. She remembers the first Christmas after she and Grandfather had moved from Ontario. She was returning to the island after a visit to Victoria with Shawn's father, a small, restless boy.
The ferry trip from the Black Ball Terminal to Port Washington's wharf was terrifying. "No fleet of B C ferries in those days," says Grandmother. The day was already darkening as they boarded the "Lady Rose" bobbing like an anxious tugboat at the dock. The captain gazed out from the glassy wheelhouse "perched like a peanut on an orange" as Grandmother puts it. A deep wooden stairwell led below deck to the only seating area, a snack counter with an icebox behind it. The whole area was decorated in red and green tinseled garlands, cedar and balsam boughs, and a tiny tree with six lights. Soon after starting out the icebox was sliding from side to side "like a carnival ride gone berserk," cackles Grandmother. Waves and cold, wind-whipped water crashed above decks and cascaded down the narrow passage. "As the decorations flooded around us, I hauled your father upstairs to the railing where our heads cleared quickly in the brisk cold wind." The storm seemed to lessen as the ship slipped into the small bay of a nearby island. Holding a piece of fancy work up to her eye, Grandmother sets her jaw, saying, "We soon learned to ride out winter storms in the Christmas season.”
At Christmas time when Grandmother was young, the most exciting places to be on the island were the square, two-room schoolhouse and the community hall. The children spent weeks practicing their parts in carol singing and plays. "Everyone took part, even the older lanky boys whose voices were breaking," says Grandmother peering solemnly over glasses that Shawn says make her eyes look like they are hanging down. There was no Christmas concert at the school. Everything was practiced and prepared for an island concert at the community hall. On that magic night everyone played and sang and danced in the presence of a twenty-foot fir tree cut fresh from the forest and dressed up in yards and yards of strung popcorn and every possible kind of glitter. Santa visited with oranges and a present for every boy and girl with his and her name right on them! The gifts were handmade arts and crafts from all the parents. "Your father never figured out how it was possible for Santa to know all the names," and Grandmother shakes her head and smiles with the corners of a mouth that could keep secrets.
Grandmother told Shawn of special events that had happened out at the island home during the winter holidays. The sights and smells of the Christmas season would often bring back many pleasant memories – the bright colourful lights, the aroma of eggnog and hot mincemeat pie, the peppermint tang of a piece of candy cane, the pungent smell of pitch from evergreens and bowls of almonds, filberts and walnuts waiting for the cracker. “Each year your father got well into the spirit leading to Christmas Day and the annual evening concert at the community hall was always a frenzied success,” said Grandmother as her voice raised and sounded like it wanted to break into song. “Each year we would make the forage down to the government wharf to meet the Christmas ship visiting outlying ports along the coast. Every child assembled was tossed a package secured with a rubber band containing three comic books, a Mandarin orange and a half-pound of rock-hard ribbon candy. And each year I made sure your father would be content with reading the comics and eating the oranges in front of a blazing fireplace where I would burn the candy, ‘Bad for your teeth,’ I always told him but he did have a few pieces before the scorching” and Grandmother’s eyes twinkled over Shawn.
“After church we would spend the day selecting and trimming the tree, a thick bushy balsam from the nearby woods. The living room would be heavy with the forest smell. I would haul out my cherished and secreted collection of ornaments. These were not the plastic and rubber gewgaws you see today,” said Grandmother, wagging her finger back and forth. “Oh no, these were ancient and ageless and, for your father’s young sake, most were unbreakable. There were paper bells wrapped in silver foil, miniature wooden churches with real steeples and cellophane windows simulating stained glass and red, blue and silver birds resembling cardinals or jays each with a metal clasp for a perch and a fan of long, slender, stiff wire bristles for tail feathers. The ones your father found the most simple and intriguing were the ‘icicles’. These were not the icicles made of stringy strands of aluminum you see in stores now – thin wispy strands that flinch at sudden drafts and gravitate toward the static television screen. These were cast in sturdy, twisted, beveled metal and coated in bright colours and as they moved with a draught they would appear to be spinning,” and Grandmother reached above Shawn’s head in mid-air to caress and spin each icicle on its own. “Hung with invisible wires, they would bob and twist on the tree catching and reflecting glows and sparkles. All these ornaments were wrapped in waxed paper and padding and I cautioned your father severely to be careful. I would often say to him, ‘These decorations are all remembrances of the happy Christmases we had in Regina and I don’t want them damaged or ‘roughhoused’ in any way’”. Grandmother beamed broadly and said, “The tree was finished and looked as beautiful a sight as it had ever looked in years past.”
Grandmother lowers her voice and puts her head down close beside Shawn’s and continues, “Late one afternoon a few days later I received a telephone call. Sandy Duncan, an eighty-two year old ‘free spirit’, shall we say, had decided he was a burden to his family. He had made his way down to the government wharf in the midst of a December storm. He had fashioned a makeshift shelter under the dock and he was determined to remain inside a cardboard crate with a single blanket,” and Shawn sees Grandmother is shaking her head slowly from side to side and she has opened her hands, spreading the fingers wide apart. “He was convinced with a thermos of hot coffee and some private talk to return home with me. I piled him and his suitcase into the old yellow ’48 Fargo and said I had to call home and let everyone know we were on our way. I drove slowly with extra caution on the winding island road,” she said with an exaggerated wink to Shawn.