The dog shook ermine flakes from his woolly coat and wagged his busy tail slowly as he recognized me. His muzzle had grown as gray as Granddad’s stubble. It had been too long since I’d visited them.
“Granddad, hop in,” I shouted reaching across to shove open the passenger door. Granddad still refused to wear his hearing aid. “Merry Christmas, Buster. Get in the back, will you, buddy?”
“Let him ride in front,” my grandfather said opening the door for the old dog. “He likes to see where he’s going.”
The bond between Granddad and his dog had always been obvious. I recall him sitting in the twilight by a long, narrow farmhouse window on a blanket-covered couch beside a big wood stove in the kitchen, reading “The Family Herald,” shabby carpet slippers on his feet, granny glasses perched midway down his nose. Buster sat beside him, resting his muzzle on the shoulder of his companion’s faded plaid shirt.
As I matured I began to see Granddad’s handicap as part of the reason he preferred the company of his dog. He didn’t have to struggle to comprehend or concern himself about making an inappropriate response.
Buster was to be the last in a line of canines that lived out long, contented lives under my grandfather’s guidance and guardianship. When Granddad, aged eighty, had purchased the pup, my father had deemed it a ridiculous move.
“Father won’t live much longer and then we’ll have to find a home for a big farm pup,” he’d declared, shaking his head ruefully.
But live much longer he did. Granddad had turned ninety-six that Christmas I met him at the gate. Buster was a venerable sixteen.
Granddad had trained Buster as he had all his dogs in their youth to herd and guard, to respect and obey. I never saw him hug a dog but then I never saw him physically punish one either.
“You’d better go down and bring those cows up now,” I recall him telling Buster on summer evenings when I was visiting the farm. And off the dog would go, to reappear shortly over the crest of the hill, driving the herd in for milking at the proper slow plod.
As time passed, Buster became Granddad’s ears. He let him know when someone was coming up the hill to the house or knocking at the door or when a weasel threatened the chicken coop.
Buster rode on the seat of the truck wagon with Granddad on work days and in his buggy (which my grandfather insisted on driving well into the 1960’s) with him on Sundays. About the only time they were separated was when Granddad went to town and then Buster spent his day at the gate, waiting for his return and guarding the property.
Granddad died that spring. Buster, matted and arthritic, stood in a corner of the front verandah, shaggy head drooping, as the coffin was carried out of the rambling old house and down the steps.
The following morning I found the old dog seemingly asleep by the long window in the kitchen. His head rested on a pair of shabby carpet slippers. All of his life he’d demonstrated the spirit of Christmas through his loyalty, love, and devotion. What more could anyone expect of a relationship.
Angel in a Kerchief
Angels walk among us. They appear unexpectedly, not exclusively during the Christmas season, but always when they’re needed most. Sometimes they even wear a kerchief.
This particular angel came to me in February but since she was the embodiment of the true spirit of Christmas, her story belongs in this collection. This is the story of my own special angel…
A blizzard was raging outside the small Tabusintac farm house my new husband and I had moved in to three days earlier. As I looked out the window into the roiling sea of white, I felt lost and alone. Married only a week, Ron and I had moved to this small, rural community where he taught school and I, a newcomer, knew virtually no one. I’d made a terrible mistake, I thought, and wanted desperately to go home to my widower father. I was nineteen.
As tears trickled down my cheeks, I saw something moving out in the storm. Then I realized it was a person struggling through the wind and snow, a kerchief tied about her head and a package tucked under her arm. Who would come out on such a terrible day I wondered as my visitor battled her way onto my doorstep.
“Hello,” she said when I opened the door to be greeted by a gust of wind and snow and the sweetest smile this side of heaven. “I’m Maud Hierlihy, your neighbor from across the road. I thought you might like a loaf of fresh bread.”
“Come in,” I invited taking the package from her. Its warmth spread into my cold hands.
She removed the wet kerchief from her graying hair. “Thank you,” she said, still smiling.
As she bent to pull off her snow-crusted boots, a sense of peace and belonging wafted over me. The desire to go back to my former home began to shrink.
Eighteen months later, Maud would again make another of what had become regular visits to our small house, this time to minister to my baby daughter who was screaming until her tiny face had turned a horrible shade of red. I believe I was in a worse state than the child, terrified and feeling utterly helpless. Maud took Joan in her arms, sat down in a rocking chair, laid her gently face-down across her knees and began to massage her back.
Within seconds a huge belch erupted from the tiny body, and Joan stopped crying.
“Sometimes putting a child over your shoulder doesn’t work,” she smiled gently up at me. “Sometimes this does.”
The mother of eight, Maud knew what she was talking about.
The next spring Maud again crossed the back country road to our house to take Joan home with her while I went to the hospital to give birth to her sister, Carol. There was a repeat performance the following year when our son Steven was born. Each time I went into the delivery room secure in the knowledge that my family couldn’t have been in better hands.
Never a rich woman, Maud, a farmer’s wife, always had an extra bottle of homemade jam, block of freshly churned butter, bag of apples, or pork roast to give to friends and neighbors. The idea of payment never entered her mind.
Throughout the years she was always unobtrusively there when I needed her. She helped out when I was sick, nurtured my spirit when I despaired, and became surrogate grandmother to my children. She made the best molasses cookies “in the whole wide world” Joan declared when she began to talk. Hihi, as she called Maud, was the fairy godmother who took her picking blueberries and let her play among her chickens.
When Maud Hierlihy died at the age of eighty-six, the entire population of Tabusintac turned out to mourn her passing. She’d seldom traveled beyond the boundaries of the small rural community where she’d been born and lived all her life, had never become rich or famous but within the little service district she called home, her kindness and altruism had become legendary.
A month later my beloved dog, Chance, died. Maud would have known how to comfort me I thought, my heart aching as I stored Chance’s collar in a drawer. She would have known what to do to ease my pain and loneliness.
That night I had a dream. I saw Maud, a kerchief tied around her head, picking blueberries in a beautiful, sun-drenched meadow. Chance sat at her side. An aura of peace surrounded them. The ache in my heart subsided, soothed by the vision of an angel who carried the spirit of Christmas in her heart every day of the year.
Twelve-Month Santa
Another Christmas memory embedded deep in my heart is, in my opinion, better than the exploits of Santa and Rudolph. It’s the story of a mail carrier and his horse, the true story of Edgar Hierlihy and his faithful mare Peg. Maud’s husband, he, like his wife, was blessed with an altruistic spirit. In the thirteen years (1951-1964) he and Peg delivered the post in the small rural New Brunswick community of Tabusintac, they brought so much more than the mail to the scattered homes along their route that they far exceeded the expectations held for Santa. Furthermore, they did it not just once in December but six times a week, twelve months of the year.
Quite possibly the last mail carrier in New Brunswick to deliver using actual horsepower, Edgar distributed a cornucopia of items Canada Post would never have appr
oved. Settled into the back of his wagon, huddled between mail bags were groceries, pints of cream, jugs of milk, cartons of eggs, bricks of butter, dress patterns, and, in season, flower bulbs and seeds.
Edgar carried the news of the community to the scattered farms along his route, as well. Never too rushed to share a sorrow, a joke, or a cup of tea, he brought a boundless supply of information and good will that connected his community regardless of weather or road conditions.
“These back country roads in spring could be a combination of mud, slush, and frozen ruts,” Edgar’s son-in-law Boucher Palmer recalled. “Under those conditions, Edgar would borrow a second horse from his neighbor and harness her beside Peg to make a team. Then he’d hitch them to a drag sled and head out along his route.”
Spring was also the time Edgar delivered special items such as the first crop of rhubarb. Like a harbinger of summer, he brought bundles to anyone who had a taste for it along his route.
May and June would find him delivering those all-important orders from Eaton’s catalogue. Outfits for weddings, christenings, and graduations crowded into Edgar’s buggy. In late summer and autumn, he brought new clothes for back-to-school. And, of course, just before Christmas, he delivered packages containing gifts and items that would be gifts.
Along his route, he also carried out numerous services Canada Post would never have dreamed of including in a job description. He delivered lunches forgotten at home to children in any of several of the one-room schools along his way and drove students who felt sick back home.
“I remember Edgar picking me up at school one day when I was about seven years old,” recalled Carol Robertson. “I was feeling terrible and just wanted to go home. It was winter, and Edgar tucked me into the buffalo robe he had in his sleigh. To this day I’m grateful for that drive. I found out later I had pneumonia.”
“Whenever I needed a drive to school, Edgar and Peg would pick me up and drive me,” Mary (Ross) Stokes, a teacher at one of the single classroom schools along Edgar’s route, remembered. “To offer to pay him would have been to insult him. Doing favors was a way of life for him.”
And all this for $2.50 a day. Later, under contract, he’d make $20.00 a week. Included in this princely sum was the assumption that he’d provide his own means of transportation.
“When oats went to $3.20 a bag, Dad didn’t know how he could afford to continue,” his son Frank said. “He always took good care of Peg and wouldn’t see her go to work without being properly fed.
“Sometimes Dad used another horse to give Peg a break but generally it was Peg who did the mail route,” Frank continued. “We estimate Peg had over 52,000 miles on her when, due to illness, she had to be put down. She was born on our farm and lived out her entire life there. The day she left us was a sad one.”
Frank recalled his father coming home from his mail route and after he and the faithful Peg had eaten their supper, both of them heading out to help a neighboring widow with her haying.
Edgar’s dedication to assisting friends and neighbors appeared boundless. Residents still tell the story of how he returned to the local grocery store on the main road to get a special kind of milk for a baby whose family had no means of transportation. And this was after a full day of delivering mail…a day that had started at 9:00 am with sorting at the post office and, on a good day, ended at 3:00 pm.
“There was no backup for Dad,” Frank said. “No sick days or anything like that. Dad drove the mail no matter how he felt. I remember in winter he wore an old fur coat with a parka and woolen mitts with leather covers. He always wore a tie pulled up tight to help him keep warm and had a couple of buffalo robes to throw over his knees. Nothing kept him from his rounds. He was dedicated to his job.”
But perhaps the most appreciated and unfailing service Edgar provided was his willingness to lend an empathetic ear. No matter how long or demanding his day, no matter how tired he might be, he always had time to sympathize with a problem and share a joke. His sense of humor brightened many moments for customers along his route.
Edgar could just as easily laugh at his own foibles as he could at someone else’s. One local classic example concerned the day the local minister asked Edgar for a drive across the Tabusintac Bridge.
With his usual alacrity, Edgar replied, “Sure, sure.”
What Edgar didn’t know was that while he and the minister had been chatting in the post office, some of the local pranksters had fastened a large, provocative picture of a lady inside the front of his buggy. It had been intended as an innocuous bit of humor since they’d had no way of knowing the clergyman was going to ask for a lift.
When Edgar emerged with the minister, they could only watch as he and his unexpected passenger proceeded to the buggy and climbed aboard.
Although history hasn’t recorded what happened next, anyone who knew Edgar could predict. He’d mutter a few startled, “Dear, dears,” flap the reins to put Peg into motion, and proceed to view the incident exactly in the way in which it was intended…an affectionate joke on a man everyone knew was perfectly capable of appreciating it.
He enjoyed any well-intentioned story that could get a laugh. A favorite concerned one of his pigs. When it got out of its pen and was found wandering on the road near his farm he’d deny ownership. It was just too darned ugly he chuckled.
And then there was the tale about his cow. When he met a local lady on the road one afternoon as he was leading Bessie home from having made her annual visit to a neighbor’s bull, he told her the Jersey had run away rather than risk offending the woman’s delicate sensibilities.
Edgar Hierlihy retired from delivering the mail in 1964 at age sixty-five. When he passed away on September 4, 1976, the entire community turned out for his funeral.
“I can’t remember anyone ever having a bad word to say about Dad,” Frank said softly.
There’s an old Irish saying that goes something to the effect that you should live your life so well that when you die, even the undertaker is sorry. And he was. Edgar, the twelve-month Santa Claus, had lived the kind of life that could make it happen and left his memory strong in my heart.
The Night of the Northern Lights
Time passed and our family expanded to include three bright, delightful, lively (forgive the description but I am their mother) children. Our own family traditions grew as well. One of them was an annual week-after-Christmas visit to our camp. It was a much anticipated event for the kids but one cold, blustery December day as we loaded our Volkswagon Beetle for the trek, I wondered if it was worth the effort. Piling enough boots, jackets, bedding, and groceries into a miniscule car with three kids (ages eight, nine, and ten) and two dogs (a Lab and a Beagle) was a monumental task. As husband, Ron, fastened skis, poles, and snowshoes on the roof, I looked at the kids, their faces bright with anticipation and decided, okay, just one more year. Christmas with its commercialism and financial stress had worn me to the “bah humbug” stage that winter.
Once packed and everyone in place, wiggle room was close to non-existent. No one dared ask for a pit stop, not even the dogs. Their heads protruding from among clothing, sleeping bags, and food, quite possibly only the anticipation of the country freedom kept them quiet.
Volkswagens of those days were supposedly kept snug as the proverbial bug in a rug by a gas heater. Ours invariably failed during those Yuletide trips. Only overcrowding and body heat saved us from hypothermia.
Finally we arrived at the camp to an orange-pink sunset slashed with purple brushstrokes above a snow frosted forest of spruce and pines. We huddled together on the doorstep while Ron unlocked the door.
Bursting into the interior, we discovered the place felt colder than outdoors. While Ron ignited the oil space heater in the cabin’s center, the children and I scrambled to divest the overburdened car. The dogs, wild after their release, raced through the snowdrifts.
A half hour later, in the slowly warming room, we boiled wieners on a camp stove and softened half-froze
n buns in the steam. As darkness fell, an oil lamp illuminated sleeping bags spread out on the bunks. Outside skis, poles, and snowshoes leaned ready against the wall beside a cooler that kept milk, eggs, meat, and butter from spoiling in a dwelling as yet unacquainted with refrigeration.
Traditionally, after we ate, we made a trek on snowshoes down to the river. However, on this particular night, Ron and the girls opted to try out three pairs of spanking new cross country skis over the meadow. That left Steve, the dogs and me for the river foray. With a full moon at our backs, we started off.
Our shadows stretched before us, elongated and mobile. The dogs cavorted in and out of the darkness of trees that snapped and crackled in the frost. An occasional mutter from Steve, as we tramped along, reaffirmed he still wasn’t happy with our second choice excursion.
We paused as we reached the bank above the river and suddenly…magic. Shy at first, then gradually sprouting higher and higher up among the stars in the night sky, the Northern Lights appeared. Undulating like mystic spirits gowned in green and white, they rose and rose, then doubled back on themselves to rise again. The heavens danced, alive with their essence.
I glanced down at Steve. With the dogs sitting by his side, he stared spellbound.
In the Far North, people say they’ve heard the Northern Lights speak in the whistling voice of migratory birds. Auroras, they claim, are sent to buoy up people’s spirits during the long winter when the sun doesn’t shine.
Apparently they had the same effect on my son.
“Wow!” he breathed, delighted astonishment erasing all traces of discontent.
No neon display could equal it. “Bah humbug” faded from my thoughts, the wonder that is Christmas reviving in my heart in the presence of this, truly one of nature’s priceless gifts.
How My Heart Finds Christmas Page 6
