How My Heart Finds Christmas

by Gail MacMillan

  The first couple of days nothing untoward occurred. The three dogs played happily on the deck, in the yard, and at the beach.

  On the third morning things changed.

  When I went to call the dogs in after their morning ablutions, I found a pair of pink plastic flowers, a few of their fake petals missing, on the deck. I recalled having seen them on a neighbor’s lawn. Bruiser sat beside them, a grin plastered across his pushed-up little face.

  “Did you take those?” I asked pointing to the purloined posies. “No, No! Bad boy!”

  The black ears drooped repentantly for a moment. Then he blinked an eye at me and wiggled his tail.

  An hour later, when our neighbor went grocery shopping, I furtively stuck the two worse-for-wear flowers back in her faux-flower garden. That was easy I thought as I trotted home. And now that he knew better, our houseguest wouldn’t do it again. He’d looked so contrite.

  Apparently I hadn’t learned anything about Bruiser’s persistence during his paper-pirate days I realized later that week. Each morning our deck sported new booty. A tennis ball, a toy truck, a plastic shovel, a baseball cap, a deflated beach ball (I refused to reflect on how it had gotten into that condition) and, most alarmingly, what looked like a doll’s amputated arm.

  Worse was yet to come. The next morning, a shoe appeared on the deck. Obviously new, obviously expensive.

  “Oh, Bruiser!” I breathed, turning the slender, high-heeled strappy sandal over in my hands. “What have you done now!”

  For a moment, my tone of voice made his ears droop and his tail straighten. For a moment he looked almost ashamed. Almost. And only for a moment. Then, his tail re-knotted, his ears went up and his mouth widened in that now-familiar roguish grin.

  Ron joined me on the deck. “There’s only one thing to do about this,” he said. He took the shoe from my hand and, like the prince in Cinderella, set off down the road to find someone with its mate.

  “That’s it.” On his return, Ron picked up the Pug and looked him squarely in the eyes. “No more stealing, understood?”

  For a moment, black ears drooped and the broad mouth sagged. For a moment one could almost believe he was truly sorry. Almost.

  The instant Ron replaced the canine culprit on the deck, his entire body flashed back to perky exuberance. He turned to Barbie-Q who’d been dozing in the sun and began racing around her, barking and daring her to play.

  “When did Nancy say she’d be back?” Ron asked as the two little dogs made circuit after circuit, barking and yelping.

  That evening marked the beginning of a long weekend in New Brunswick. Shortly after 6 pm, the air grew rich with the smell of barbecuing beef and pork from our neighbors’ barbeques. All three dogs, lying on the deck, bellies full of supper, sniffed deeply. Leaving them to savor the aroma, I went inside to clear away our dishes.

  I returned to the deck twenty minutes later to discover Bruiser missing. When 9:00 pm arrived and he still hadn’t returned, I set out to look for him. Yes, most of our neighbors informed me, he’d visited their parties but he was no longer around. Finally, as darkness and mosquitoes gathered around me, I headed home. I hoped to find him on the deck. No such luck.

  When the rest of our household settled to sleep (“He’ll be along,” Ron said confidently as he headed off to bed) I curled up on the couch with a book to wait…

  I awoke with a start when I heard paws on the deck. Stumbling to my feet, I switched on the outdoor light. There stood Bruiser, a big T-bone thick with meat clamped in his jaws.

  “Where have you been?” I scolded opening the door for him.

  He glanced up at me disdainfully, then staggered up the steps and past me into the cottage, clutching his booty. He reeked of fat and barbecue sauce.

  He looked up at me again, gave a weary sigh, then headed for the kitchen. There, with a tired grunt, he climbed onto the couch that had become his bed at our house. It took the last of his energy to bury his loot under a pillow. The task completed, he settled himself on top of it and closed his eyes. His belly, bloated with the results of foraging from party to party, stuck out from beneath him.

  Nancy arrived home several days later. With big news. And a request. She’d decided to join the armed forces. Could we keep Bruiser while she was away at boot camp and basic training?

  “Well…okay,” we agreed.

  For some reason, Molly chose that moment to demonstrate a trick I’d been trying to teach her for several days.

  She lay down on the deck and covered both eyes with her paws.

  Bruiser, sitting beside her, grinned.

  But the story doesn’t end there. After all, where’s the Christmas bit, right?

  Nancy returned from boot camp at the end of her training and collected the Pug. We watched him go, knowing she was taking him to Vancouver and that our chances of ever seeing him again were slim to none. That night I shed more than a few tears after the rest of the family had gone to bed.

  The following spring Nancy again contacted us. She was being deployed on an eight month mission. Would we take Bruiser once again?

  He arrived on a cold day in April with his suitcase full of food, toys, bowls, collars, leashes, and even a warm winter coat. As Nancy deposited him on our living room floor, he looked up at us grinning the broadest Pug grin ever and swirling his curly tail so fast I thought it would be launched free of his little backside. He had returned and was glad of it.

  We had a great summer with Bruiser as part of the family but as November approached and time for him once again to leave us approached, I felt a lump in my throat every time visions of the impending separation came to mind. He’d been with us so long this time, had become so much a part of our family. I began my Christmas shopping but with no real enthusiasm. Whenever anyone asked me what I wanted, I stifled the urge to tell the truth: that I wanted Bruiser to stay forever.

  And then the call came. Nancy had arrived back in port in Vancouver and would be coming to New Brunswick the week before Christmas. I told her Bruiser was fine, that he was fit and ready to go but the ache behind my eyes was a painful sting that held back tears. We talked and joked and then we hung up, and I cried.

  Two days before Christmas I got another call from Nancy. She was being deployed at the end of January. Her voice broke as she made the request. Could we keep Bruiser permanently? Shipping him coast to coast each time she went to sea wasn’t fair to the little guy. He deserved a permanent home with people who loved him. She knew we were those people.

  Joy burst over me like a skyrocket. Yes, of course. We’d adopt Bruiser and care for him and love him, and Nancy could visit whenever she had an opportunity.

  So two days before Christmas and many years after that Yuletide when I’d wished so vehemently for my first dog, I got yet another. Apparently the magic of the season is still intact and going strong.

  Hands Remembered

  My father’s hands frightened me as he tried to hang the tiny chocolate box ornament on the Christmas tree. Once my source of strength and reassurance, they trembled and fumbled. I couldn’t bear to watch. Those same shaking hands had fashioned many of my best memories. Now there’d be no more and all because of a disease called Parkinson’s.

  My thoughts went back to those Sunday afternoons when I’d been a teenager and totally enamored with horses.

  “Step here,” my father would say holding down his big, cupped hand.

  Obediently I’d place my booted foot into the human stirrup and rise, phoenix-like, upwards until I could scramble into the old cavalry saddle strapped to the back of my grandfather’s Percheron. I took the strength in my father’s hands for granted.

  Those same hands were also capable of great gentleness. When I was suffering from a severe case of food poisoning he sat by my bed all through that fearful night, dipping a face cloth into a basin of cool water beside my bed, wringing it out and wiping my fevered forehead time and time again until the brunt of the illness had passed. My father was a mechanic by
trade, and I can still recall the scent of motor oil from his damp hands that night. To this day the smell of automobile lubricant brings a warm feeling of reassurance wafting over me.

  My father’s hands supported me when he was teaching me to swim and ride a bike. I slipped into the water and onto the seat of my first vehicle confident he’d keep me safe.

  That sense of confidence inspired by the touch of my father’s hands extended into other facets of my life. Most winter Sunday afternoons, from the time I was nine or ten, my father and I would don skates and head up the brook that led away from my grandfather’s farm and into the woods beyond. We’d skate far back into the forest only turning back when the long shadows of a winter’s dusk began to darken the way.

  As the shadows spread and thickened and an owl hooted in the encroaching gloom, I’d skate closer to my father, closer and closer, until his gloved hand stretched out to me. I’d clasp it in my mitten and know I was safe from any dangers the night forest might hold.

  In junior high school I suddenly became ashamed of my father’s oil-stained hands and broken fingernails. I didn’t want my friends whose fathers worked in offices and banks and hospitals to see his laborer’s hands. I didn’t stop to remember the strength and kindness in them or the food, clothing, and shelter they’d amply supplied for my mother and me for so many years.

  He must have recognized my embarrassment and quietly absented himself whenever I brought friends home. I’m still ashamed of how I treated this loving, gentle man during those selfish days of adolescence.

  I became a woman, married, and left my father’s house for several years. When I returned I brought a baby daughter with me. With my husband, her biological father, working five hundred miles away, Joan at fifteen months readily accepted her now widower grandfather as a surrogate dad.

  He delighted in the role. Even after a long day’s work at his service station, he always found the time and energy to push her proudly up and down our street in her stroller.

  One night I awoke to find my father seated on a chair beside Joan’s crib in my room. He had a basin of water and a face cloth and was bathing her small face. He’d heard her crying and had come into our room to discover her running a fever. Pregnant with her sister, I must have been too deep in sleep to hear her distress.

  As I sat up a sense of déjà vu wafted over me. Those same work worn, gentle hands, now wrinkled and knotted with age were just as kind and capable as they’d ever been.

  Years later when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease my heart ached as I watched him struggle to sign his name or drink a cup of tea. He could no longer hold a book or newspaper steady enough to read. When he had to give up his job and forfeit his driver’s license, he’d wilted.

  Eventually he developed pneumonia and lapsed into a coma. He couldn’t speak and his eyes were closed by the time I arrived at his hospital bedside. I pulled a chair as close to him as possible and took one of his hands between mine.

  It felt so cold and limp, looked so white and clean that at first it seemed as if I was holding the hand of a stranger.

  “Daddy,” I whispered. “I’m here.”

  Pale fingers struggled and moved in mine.

  For the next two days I sat by his bed, holding his hand and reminiscing, letting him know how very much I’d appreciated him and what beautiful and poignant memories I had of our years together. Once in a while, getting weaker and less frequent, his fingers would stir in mine, and I’d know he was still listening and understood.

  My father passed away quietly one November afternoon as I sat by his hospital bed reminiscing about our time together. I hope in those last hours of his life I was able to return at least a small measure of the strength, courage, and love his hands had always given to me.

  Although physically he’s no longer with me, I know that he’s never far away in spirit. Whenever I’m distressed or frightened or tired, I can still feel his hand on my forehead, gentle and strong and reassuring and smelling of motor oil.

  Of Mice and Memories

  One frosty, overcast Christmas Eve I returned to the camp. It had been thirty years since I’d visited the place but that morning I’d felt a sudden, intense need to revive its memories. As I entered the overgrown space that had been its firebreak, a carrion crow rose into the cold, gray sky, its cries raw and blasphemous in the reverent hush. An icy sense of loss washed over me.

  All that was left among the tangled undergrowth was a pile of rotting gray boards. Even the Star stove that had been the old building’s heart was only a bit of rusted cast iron with lids missing and oven door hanging on a single hinge. A small animal had built a nest inside. A mouse perhaps? I remembered mice…

  Thirty years ago hunting camps built by my father and his friends had been veritable mouse hostelries. Single-roomed creations of boards nailed to two by fours, roofs tar papered to keep out rain and snow, these cabins had never experienced the luxury of caulking. The process hadn’t been deemed necessary by their hardy inhabitants. The resultant cracks and crevices offered natural invitations to small rodents.

  The old camp that had once stood in this clearing had, over the years successfully withstood the assaults of larger, more threatening visitors. With its plank door scarred by several attempted porcupine burglaries and an area beneath its rear window gouged by a marauding bear, this particular camp had been a place I preferred to stay inside after nightfall.

  But, of course, even there wildlife (mice) abounded. One night after we had retired to bed, I heard my father muttering from the bunk beneath mine.

  “What is it?” I asked struggling to get comfortable on the planks that served as box spring and mattress.

  “Darn mouse keeps running over my face,” he replied.

  His words drove all possibility of sleep from my mind at the speed of light. While I have never been unreasonably leery of sow bears with cubs or cow moose with calves, the vision of an insomniac mouse galloping across my head still has the ability to render me sleepless on any given night.

  On another night, when a group of my father’s friends joined us in the camp for a late evening feast of partridge stew, the mouse again put in an appearance. Or perhaps I should say appearances. In the flickering light of the oil lamps, he kept darting devil-may-care across a rafter directly over the stove where the uncovered pot of stew sat simmering. His shadow was immensely grotesque on the plank walls, and I assumed I would not sleep again that night.

  But when my father and his friends began telling stories, my obsession with the mouse temporarily ceased. As the fire crackled and snapped and boots and socks huddled up to its warmth to dry, these old-time hunters spun yarns of the best of hunts and the worst of hunts; about well-remembered gun dogs including the farm Collie that had once treed a cougar and of a high-bred, much touted Spaniel so timid he’d piddle at the mere sight of a shotgun. And of other nights in other camps when, on one occasion, my father claimed he’d found black peas in the rabbit stew.

  Only when the tales came to an end did I realize I had lost sight of the mouse. When I glanced up at the beam, he was gone.

  “That mouse won’t bother you tonight,” one of my father’s droll guests caught my glance and grinned. “He slipped off the beam and fell into the stew.”

  But in recompense for the mouse, there were those wonderful nights when rain thundered across the tar papered roof. Warm and dry in my sleeping bag, my jacket rolled into a pillow beneath my head, I don’t believe I have ever felt as content…

  Awakening in the pitch darkness to the pattering of the first shy droplets, I would roll over onto my back, fasten my fingers beneath my head, and settle down to enjoy nature’s symphony as it built to a thunderous crescendo. On such nights, even the mouse seemed to be lulled into foregoing his nocturnal ramblings.

  Later, soothed by the rhythm of the rain, I’d sleep. In the morning I’d awake to a golden dawn as sunlight slanted through the ripening October leaves dripping crystal droplets outside the windo
w. As my father scraped back the lid of the old wood stove to start the breakfast fire, the finale of the night’s water music would be slipping from eves and trees.

  Later we’d feast on sausages, eggs, and bread toasted over the fire washed down with several steaming cups of strong tea. Then we’d head out to hunt the freshly washed autumn bush.

  As we walked away on one such morning, our boots swishing though the wet, encroaching undergrowth, I paused and looked back at the camp. Alone beneath lofty pines, maples, and birches, it was growing gray and gaunt.

  From the left wall of its weather-bitten façade, the stove pipe elbowed its way outside, then right-angled up into the brisk morning air. Half way along its length a bit of support wire had been looped about its girth and tacked to the roof near the peak. A drizzle of smoke from our dying breakfast fire drifted drowsily skyward from its rusting mouth.

  The previous spring my father had fastened a piece of window screening over the opening in an effort to keep sparks in and small forest creatures (mice) out. His work, it appeared, had been at least half in vain. On the rain soaked doorstep, my anathema, the mouse dry as the proverbial bone from a night no doubt spent indoors, sat sunning himself in a blade of sunlight that had sliced its way into the little clearing through the living canopy of greens and golds.

  Suddenly the entire clearing appeared bathed in soft tungsten light, a mellowing bit of the almost-past that could not come again. I shivered, pulled my collar up against the early morning chill, and turned away. I was nineteen and about to leave my father for another man…the man I was to marry…

  Three decades later, on this Christmas Eve, I knew I shouldn’t have returned. My father had died three weeks earlier, a victim of unhappiness and Parkinson’s disease. I wished I could remember him only as he’d been in the days before my mother’s death, a failed second marriage, and a debilitating illness had ravished his unique sense of humor and joie de vivre. Before he and the camp had become destined for this sad, quiet end.