How My Heart Finds Christmas

by Gail MacMillan

  I looked over at this remarkable man who’d had the strength to prevent personal animosity from eroding his spirit, even in the face of death, and knew I’d glimpsed a part of what, much more than the medals he’d won, made him a hero.

  Perhaps this philosophy and his having the strength to live according to it had proven an inspiration to his comrades. Certainly at his funeral in 1990, the men of his old regiment exhibited a profound respect and affection for their fellow soldier.

  Wit had refused promotions to stay with his buddies fighting at the front. Some of them may have followed his example. Whatever the reason, they’d remained his life-long friends.

  But it was only last Remembrance Day, I came to understand what I believe had sustained my father-in-law during those horrendous years, what had made it possible for him to return to Canada with optimism and joy in his heart. The explanation came from the lips of one of his fellow veterans as he addressed a television audience.

  “We had a job to do, and we did it,” he’d said. “The hope of happiness after the horror stayed strong in our hearts.”

  Perhaps memories of joyous Christmases had also played a part, the strains of Bing Crosby singing, “White Christmas” just barely audible through the roar of battle.

  Christmas Labrador

  Christmas can be a time of healing; a time for putting the pain of the past behind us and opening our hearts to new vistas of comfort and love. Such is the case in the following story of the Christmas Labrador…

  This tale began one beautiful October afternoon, as I watched Ron securing the bottom of our chain link fence with tent pegs in another vain attempt to contain Brandy our wily Beagle, his dad arrived. After greeting his son, my father-in-law strolled over to join me.

  “Ron always loved dogs,” Wilson sighed as he sank into a lawn chair. “I guess all these fencing efforts are his way of trying to keep Brandy safe so your kids won’t have to feel the way he did when Blackie was killed.”

  “Blackie?”

  “The Black Lab mix he had when he was a little boy. One day when Ron was seven, Blackie wandered out of our yard and a neighbor shot him.”

  “No!” My breath gushed out in a horrified exhale. “That’s terrible!”

  “He never talked about it…not then, not ever that I know of.” Ron’s father squinted up into the sun. “I think it hurt too much. He loved that dog.”

  I didn’t mention our conversation to Ron but that evening I came to a decision. Thirty years after Blackie’s death, he deserved to have another wonderful canine; a purebred Labrador Retriever from the best bloodlines.

  The next day I began my search for the perfect dog. Six weeks before Christmas I found exactly what I was looking for. Natalie Long of Acamac Kennels had been breeding championship-hunting Labs for over thirty years. After a lengthy telephone conversation with her, she and I agreed on a puppy fit for Ron, a yellow female named Daisy. Natalie assured me this dog had already shown an amazing aptitude as a hunter, one of the best she’d ever bred.

  Even though I knew Blackie had been a black male, I remembered Ron had hunted contentedly over a yellow dog on more than one occasion. Daisy it was, I decided. The next day I sent a check off to Natalie Long. Only one problem remained. Natalie’s kennel was situated three hundred miles from our home. Oh, well, I thought. I’ll figure something out.

  I’d planned to keep my gift a secret until a few days before Christmas but fate stepped in. The Canadian Armed Forces were offering tours of their facilities to a select group of secondary school teachers. Ron was chosen as a participant. The trip, by an amazing coincidence, would climax with a visit to the city nearest Acamac Kennels.

  The temptation was too great. I told Ron about his present.

  To say he was thrilled would be the understatement of the decade. His eyes rounded, he sucked in his breath. And then he kissed me as ardently as he had when we’d first started dating.

  I must admit I did see a slight lessening of his enthusiasm when I explained his very own dream Lab was a yellow female but it was so minuscule, it barely gave me a moment’s pause. In hindsight, I realize I’d been ridiculously naïve.

  The next morning he set out on the tour, the agreement being that he’d visit his dog. By then, a plan that Daisy would be shipped to us a few days before Christmas had been put in place. Bringing her home ahead of time would not only be premature (we wanted to surprise the kids at an appropriate time) but also (I thought) impossible. Ron would be traveling by Armed Forces limo, no dogs allowed.

  A week later I received a phone call. Ron had been to the kennel and he’d made a minor adjustment to my purchase. Instead of the five-month-old yellow female, he’d convinced Natalie to let him have a six-week-old black male. Furthermore, once he’d made his choice and held it in his arms, he refused to relinquish it.

  “I’m going to convince the limo driver to let me bring him home with me,” he said.

  “But what about tonight? What about the no-dogs-allowed hotel you’re staying at? What about milk? Isn’t he too young to be away from his mother? Isn’t…?” I sent a barrage of questions flying over the line.

  “I’ve already smuggled him up to my room inside my jacket,” he replied proudly. “I told a lady on the elevator it was my stomach acting up when he starting making noises.”

  “But food…?”

  “I ordered warm milk from room service…for my upset stomach,” my resourceful spouse replied smugly. “Tonight he’ll sleep in the bed with me so he won’t miss his mother and cry.” He paused, then continued softly, shyly, “You’ll like him. I named him Jet.”

  His words brought tears to my eyes. I didn’t need a thesaurus to understand his choice. No two color-based appellations could have been more closely related than Jet and Blackie.

  “Good luck,” I said.

  I never knew how he did it but somehow he convinced his military driver to allow the puppy into the back seat of the big car. Consequently, the following afternoon Jet of Acamac the Third joined our family.

  Several weeks later on Christmas morning neighbors dropped in. After the children had finished displaying their presents, Ron surprised our friends by proudly declaring his gift wasn’t under the tree. It was outside…going to the bathroom (or some such euphemism) he declared proudly.

  That night after the children were asleep and Jet lay curled up beside Brandy, the beagle, on the big dog bed next to the couch, Ron told me about Blackie for the first time. The Christmas Labrador had apparently worked one of those amazing occurrences for which the Yuletide is famous.

  Jet’s Gift

  Although we had no way of knowing that Christmas when Jet first arrived to become part of our family, the big, gentle dog was to give us a greater gift than anything we could ever have imagined.

  It began in the early autumn of Jet’s first year.

  Our twelve-year-old daughter Joan had just been diagnosed with a rare and potentially life-threatening blood disease. In the hospital, bruised and weak from transfusions, she’d begged for a day’s reprieve to go to the country with her parents and her Black Lab pup, eleven-month-old Jet of Acamac the Third. After much deliberation, the doctor had agreed.

  It was a gray September Sunday. Clouds hung low in a charcoal sky. We were packing to go home late in the afternoon when Jet, galloping joyfully after a squirrel, dashed into the path of an oncoming car. We heard tires squeal and the simultaneous screams from girl and dog.

  When we reached the road, we found a deathly pale teenager kneeling in the ditch, an immobile pup clutched in her arms. A distressed motorist stood over them muttering, “I’m sorry. He ran right out in front of me. I couldn’t stop in time. Is he alive? Will he be okay?”

  Jet was breathing, but just barely. We gently wrapped him in quilts and loaded him into the back of our station wagon. Joan crouched in the hatchback, holding the dog’s head, whispering words of love and encouragement.

  Ron kept glancing into the rearview mirror as we drove tow
ard the city. Each time our eyes met, I knew we were both wondering what would happen to our fragile daughter if she lost her friend. The doctor had warned us against exposing her to emotional stress.

  Sunday has to be the worst day of the week to find a vet. Ours was no exception. He was out of town, his answering service informed us. If it was an emergency, we were to call his retired predecessor.

  That veterinarian was a kindly old gentleman. He took one look at our pup and declared there was no hope.

  “Have Tom put him down when he gets back tomorrow morning,” he said sadly. “It’ll be best. He’s paralyzed.”

  Joan expressed no emotion at his words, but her blue eyes turned sapphire hard. Ron and I both knew that look. She wasn’t about to accept the diagnosis, not without a fight.

  We drove home in silence.

  “Put him on my bed,” Joan said when we arrived. Her tone allowed for no argument or refusal.

  When the pup was laid as comfortable as possible in the center of her bed, I turned to her.

  “Honey, it’s only for tonight. Tomorrow…”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” she cried, throwing up her hands to cover her ears. Her arm hit her bedside lamp and sent it crashing to the floor.

  In an instant, Jet was on his feet, staggering, falling over the edge of the bed onto the floor. Leaning against the wall, his eyes glazed with shock, pain, and confusion, tongue lolling out of his mouth, the big pup stared up at us.

  “He’s not paralyzed!” Joan was on her knees beside him, kissing him, tears rolling down her cheeks. “He’s going to be all right, I know it!”

  An hour later, she was still cradling Jet in her arms when I gently broached the subject of her return to the hospital.

  “Let me talk to Dr. Henry,” she said. “He’ll understand. He’ll know I have to stay with Jet tonight.”

  Ten minutes later, she handed the phone to me.

  “He wants to talk to you,” she said, then hurried back to be with her pup.

  “I’ve decided to let her stay home tonight,” the doctor informed me. “She’d never rest away from him. But bring her in tomorrow for a blood test. I’m concerned about how all this stress is affecting her condition. And let’s keep our fingers crossed for the pup. She can’t afford to lose him at this point.”

  That night, girl and dog slept in a tangle of quilts and pillows on the living room floor. Early in the morning, we eased the big pup from her arms and carried him out to the car. If he had to be put down, better to have it done before she was awake, before she had to say good-bye.

  But our vet gave us wonderful news. After examining Jet, he told us he believed that with hospitalization and a lot of TLC, the pup could recover. How fully, Dr. Larsen couldn’t be sure, but he believed the Lab deserved the chance to explore the possibilities.

  Over the following months and years, the girl and her dog required much specialized care. There were lengthy periods of hospitalization for both. Jet lost part of one paw to infection and Joan needed multiple blood transfusions. Both had to take life much slower and more cautiously than the average girl and dog. But each time they beat their illnesses, life became just a little more precious to them. Struggling back to health, they were drawn inextricably closer in their quiet celebration of joie de vivre.

  They even discovered there were plusses to their disabilities. At a reduced pace, they both had time to savor the hamburgers, to study the birds and flowers and bullfrogs along the way. Together they enjoyed summer showers, autumn sunsets, Christmas snowfall, and the first pussy willows of spring.

  And what if one was a little too pale and the other walked with a limp? Their days were filled with the joy of lives bright with precious moments, moments they might never have been granted. He and Joan linked their spirits in a desire to survive

  Jet even managed to give Dr. Larsen a kind of partial payment for saving his life. As a result of his constant and compassionate care of the chronically lame Lab, our vet was given an award by Pets Magazine for outstanding service to a patient.

  But that wasn’t Jet’s only gift to the humans in his life. His courage and cheerfulness served as a daily lesson on how to celebrate life, no matter what its hardships. And while we were busy pretending he was no different than other dogs, Jet was just as busy forever etching his memory into our hearts.

  When he died at age sixteen, Joan, a young teacher by then with her disease in remission, was heartbroken. For days, tears and a crippling sense of loss overwhelmed her. Then a sympathy card arrived from a friend.

  “That which you have cherished with your heart you can never lose,” it read.

  Joan recognized the truth in those words. Stoically, she placed Jet’s picture on her bedside table and found the strength to get on with her life.

  She’d realized, like Ron and me, that although Jet was gone he’d never be forgotten. He’d been a joy and an inspiration all the days of his life. We can only and always be grateful that this wonderful dog shared our lives for so many years. The Christmas Labrador gave us a gift greater than anything we’d find under a tree.

  The Chair

  It’s Christmas Eve as I sit alone in the living room in the chair. The rest of the family has gone to bed but I’ve remained behind, savoring the solitude as I watch the tree lights twinkle against the tinsel on its branches. The chair and I have shared so many memories.…

  The chair came from my maternal grandparents’ house where it was part of the furniture they purchased in 1910 with this, their first and only home through fifty-three years of marriage. No one knows exactly how old the cane rocker was at that time but it probably dates from well before the opening of the 20th century. Its actual age means little to me.

  What is important is the fact that at various times over the next fifteen years, it helped my grandmother rock all six of her children to sleep. And although she never talked about it, the chair probably cradled her within its arms as she mourned the loss of one of these little ones to diabetes in 1919 just two years before the life-saving discovery of insulin.

  Years later, my mother and father were married in my grandparents’ parlor with the chair as a silent witness. They moved into the big, old house with Granddad and Nanna the following week. Two years later I was born.

  My mother told me she often rocked me to sleep in the chair although I can’t recall the experience. Edited by the passing years I do, however, remember climbing up onto its worn cushions and snuggling down with my beloved stuffed dog, Fluffy. (No teddy bears for this youngster destined to grow into a world class canine fancier!) A book was invariably involved on those occasions, picture ones at first, later those of the story variety.

  In those days, the big, old house was bursting at the seams with occupants as my uncles, one by one, brought home brides and settled in to await the day when they could afford homes of their own. Every square inch of space seemed to be in use, each mini-family assigned a single bedroom as their only private place.

  This well-peopled household made for a bustling, festive atmosphere at Christmas. I loved the warmth and security a large, loving family offered at that special time of year. Most of my best memories of those wonderful occasions included the chair.

  Each Yuletide I’d curl up in it to watch my grandmother trim the tree with small cardboard decorations she’d fashioned from discarded chocolate boxes and covered with the previous year’s gift wrappings and ribbons. Aglow with the beauty and magic of it all, my child’s heart overflowed with happiness.

  After Christmas when the tree came down and the parlor once more returned to its deserted state, the chair became my sanctuary in the crowded household. The parlor, unheated to conserve fuel with its seldom-lighted fireplace and good furniture, offered a welcome retreat for an introverted child who communicated more satisfactorily with dogs than people, who passionately loved the written word, and who was content in her own company. To fend off winter’s chill, I’d wrap Fluffy, the chair, and myself in a quilt and snugg
led down to enjoy one of my ubiquitous books with only the ticking of the mantel clock for company.

  Then, at age five, I made what for me was one of the best and most important accomplishments of my life in the chair. I LEARNED TO READ! Each afternoon, as soon as the dinner dishes had been washed, I’d beg my mother to come into the parlor, share the chair with me, and teach me the words that for her only daughter held all the magic and wonder of the universe.

  She never refused. To this day, memories of my mother, Fluffy, and me stuffed into the chair with a book are among my most treasured.

  When I was six my parents and I moved into our own home next door to my grandparents. My uncles also took their wives and went away. Granddad and Nanna used only a few rooms of the big, old house to conserve heat and maintenance. The chair remained empty and ignored in my grandparents’ closed-up parlor. For a while even I forgot about it.

  Then when I was eight, I decided I wanted to learn to play the piano. In our new home we didn’t have one nor could we afford to purchase such a luxury. But in my grandparents’ house across the backyard, in that closed-up parlor, was a perfectly lovely one. It sat right beside the chair. Shortly, with the chair an unfailingly attentive audience, I began to stumble over the scales and memorize the keys All Good Boys Deserve Fudge and FACE.

  Producing aesthetically pleasing sounds soon proved to be an elusive goal for a child who couldn’t carry a tune. Soon I abandoned the piano and returned to my first passion, reading, and what for me was its natural consequence, writing. The winter I was nine, curled up alone in the chair in the unheated parlor, my fingers pale from the cold, I wrote my first award-winning bit of literature…a nonsense poem that won first place in its division in a local elementary school contest.