Another Christmas Gone, Another New Year Here

When I think of Christmas, I think of my grandmother—the scent of fresh-cut pine, roasted turkey, mandarin orange jello. The tree, decorated in antique ornaments, is perched in front of the window between the grandfather’s Lazy Boy on the left, her glider chair and stool on the right, the day filled with the comings and goings of friends, family, and neighbours. She loved to entertain, my grandmother, and persisted despite my anti-social, Archie Bunker-esque grandfather. Dad slipped him doubles in run and eggnog, easing him quickly to snoring sleep in said Lazy-boy.

            Forty-six years after her passing, it finally occurred that I’ve spent that time trying to re-create the day—baking, ribbon candy, carefully separating breakfast grapefruit segments from peel and membrane. No matter that none of us like grapefruit. It was tradition. Twenty-five or more years before abandoned. And forty-six years after her passing, I’ve still not succeeded in making Christmas the way she managed. We transplanted Christmas to the kids as they grew and had their own. Only the mandarin orange jelly has survived.

            We’re the grandparents now. No one slips my anti-social, Archie Bunker-esque husband doubles to ease him quickly to snoring sleep. The day is filled with comings and goings—the grandkids have girlfriends and boyfriend. The two eldest are the same ages the husband and I were when we first married. I’ve given up asking where the hell the time went. And now, the second day into another year, I sit tapping the keyboard, sad and weary to the bone.

            Grandma. Rebel and traditionalist. We’re alike that way. She was sixty-seven when she left. Two years older than I am now. I try to remember her gift to me.

  I see her bent over the kitchen counter, flinging a lump of dough onto her breadboard. Knead, fold, turn; it’s a slow and deliberate rhythm all her own. She reaches for a knife and slices away a chunk small enough for my five-year-old hands to manage. Perched on the three-step stool beside her, she guides me through the motions until I master her beat. The hands that cover mine are calloused and scarred; the nails plain and unvarnished. Our loaves lay side by each on the breadboard. Mine is awkward, misshapen.         

Sighing, she sets the kettle to boil, then measures leaves into a tea ball and drops it into her favourite mug, the one with the chip on the rim. We sit at the white Arborite kitchen table, leaving the loaves to rise.

            “My mother used to read the leaves,” she said. “She stopped, though, when she saw Aunt Isa go. Bambi was your great-grandmother. She and Dee Dee lived just down the road. You never knew her; she was gone before you were born. You won’t remember great-grandpa, either— you were too young when he died. My goodness, I did give them a hard time.”

            Seeing her now, tired and worn, I can’t imagine her as a “flapper” running away to marry. The young can never imagine the old as being anything but old.

            “My parents threatened to annul it. They gave up when I told them I’d only do it again when I turned eighteen. Sometimes, I wonder what might have happened if they had, what might have been different. Oh, t’is water under the bridge, it is.” Pausing to sip her tea, she was quiet for a few minutes, then continued her story. “I had your a year later. He turned out to be a drinking man. In the end, I divorced him anyway.” 

            “Then I met your grandfather. He was a good-looking man. His mother, your Nana, was less than thrilled with the idea of him “cavorting around” with a divorcée, let alone one with a child. She came around after your mom and uncles arrived, though. What a handful they were, and there were times when only your mother looked after things. Well, honey, we need to check on that bread.”

            Leaning on the table, she pushed herself to her feet. The loaves that barely bumped the tea cloth had grown into rounded hills. To me, Grandma had made magic. Brushing the tops with melted butter, she placed them in the oven.

            “That makes the crust soft,” she said. “It’s easier for young and old teeth to chew. We’ll stay put until they’re done. This oven isn’t as reliable as it used to be.”

            Surrounded by the aroma of home, she told me the stories of family long gone, of stonemasons and shopkeepers, of elopements and something called the Boer War, of homesteading in Saskatchewan and poaching moose during the depression. I wonder if those people, my family, sat together like this and told the old stories. 

            She knew without looking that it was time to take the bread out of the oven. I thought mine looked little better for the baking and was ashamed, but Grandma insisted we’d have it with dinner.

            As I grew older, she shared many of her home arts, those that are slowly disappearing. I learned to knit and tat, to embroider and sew, to cook and make jams and pickles. I do have recipe books, but they’re a guide at best. When asked how to make such and such, my sons, daughters, and grandchildren have to translate “a little bit” of this, ”a smidge” of that or “three glugs” of the next thing. I gave them the gifts she gave to me. I give them the gift of family.