One year my sister gave me a gift I have continued to treasure. It is a gift of words. She gave it at a time when she had two young children and little money. However, she has always been resourceful.
She gave me a photocopied page from my Grandmother’s journals set in a gilded wooden frame. It has become a touchstone of Christmas, set out as early as possible.
My Grandmother’s journals are written in a flowing script with elegant capital letters. I first became aware of them as a child when I saw her writing in a scribbler and asked about it. She told me she recorded such information, as when the first and last frost came, when crops were planted and harvested, the price the geese and pigs brought, for Grandpa. I later have learned they contain more than that, but they are never confessional, not often reflective but they show the daily life of my rural grandparents in my Grandmother’s voice I remember well.
My frame has entries from December 23- December 25, 1945. As always the weather hovers about like a background character determined to take the front of stage. On the twenty-third and fourth, it is 20F below. Molly, a cow, freshened Sunday Dec 23rd, (they) are calling it Mary. Small farmers like my grandparents who would have no more than a dozen cows typically named each one. A sow had birthed a dozen piglets. That Saturday night friends, the Yoeman’s, dropped in after we were to bed, but we got up and had a cup of tea together and when they departed we gave them the 3 pigs we had in the house to see if they could have any luck with them. Friends dropping in without calling is usual and acceptable, newborn pigs at risk are brought into the house, and my Grandparents went to bed early. Best to draw a curtain on that. By the next day we just have four baby pigs now all told, I guess it was too cold for them to move and the sow laid on them. gosh it sure is bum luck. Sows lying on their young is an all too common trope. In the daytime, my Grandmother goes into London, about ten miles, to her sister-in-law Beatrice to help prepare for the next day’s dinner.
Christmas Day, 1945. My Grandparents’ two eldest sons are still overseas in the army. For my Grandmother, here’s the day all the kids look for, but oh gosh what a day it has been. Rain and sleet, we could not get to Beat’s too darn icy. George (her husband) and Vernon , (the youngest son who stays home on the farm), went up to Dales to phone her and got soaked it was raining so hard and had an awful time to keep from falling it was so icy, they couldn’t get (through) to her, guess the wires were either busy or down, but we had a chicken picked (plucked) so we had chicken for Christmas dinner steamed pudding and a mincemeat pie. Vernon got the dime out of the pudding and George the nickel. George gave me a lovely pair of ornaments. Lady and Gentleman, in blue and gold, they are real good china not Woolworth’s goods. I gave him an Oddfellow’s (his Lodge) pin and a steel measuring tape he had been wanting. Vernon got a pair of skates from the baker. So we’re all happy.
I read the words of my Grandmother and I am there magically seeing her younger self and I am at the same time in that house, where she wrote her words, at many later Christmas gatherings with my family and cousins. Now I read and smile about the Yoemans, wonder at a heifer called Mary, at pigs kept around the wood stove, and the joy of real good china. I am humbled by the simplicity. So we’re all happy. I am remembering my Grandmother, a small woman with little education who came to Canada as a Home child from England, who raised five boys and buried her only daughter at three, who married another like her from England, who worked nine years as tenant farmers before they bought their own fifty acre farm. The many Christmases at my Grandparents blend into one happy memory of sledding down the hill in the pasture, skating on the creek, presents from the cedar tree, angel hair, mittens knitted for every child, and once lovely horse head bookends from Kingsmill’s, not Woolworth’s. Grace before the food imagined for weeks. The bird, of course, and all the trimmings. Then the desserts. Christmas pudding with its special caramel sauce. Mincemeat pie, completely homemade like everything else. In the evening the adults played cards, children played crokinole or with some present, perhaps read. In the evening, the Christmas cake is brought out, admired and sliced. The chocolates with the cherry in the middle I had helped make are passed around. Adults glare at children to let them know to only take one. So we’re all happy.
