A Treasury of Christmas Stories Read online

  Bursting with indignation, Bert and I turned to Mama for an explanation. Mama was turning the handle of the cream separator and appeared not to notice that anything unusual had occurred. If she knew the reason for Papa’s behavior, she wasn’t telling.

  Papa got back about four hours later. Apparently, the urgency of Mama’s queries made them a little less discreet than usual. We overheard small scraps of conversation that we assembled later in our attic playroom: “something growing on the bone” … “can’t fix it here” … “hospital in Minneapolis” … “don’t cry” …

  “Minny-apple-is?” The word was so long and unfamiliar, I struggled to pronounce it. “But how will he ever find it?”

  “He’ll use a map. Minneapolis is a very big place and it’s on every map.” Bert’s bravado was intended for me, but it comforted us both.

  Saturday, there was another trip to town. This time, we all went. Mama bought so many groceries there was hardly room for Bert and me to squeeze in between the flour sack and the boxes. We should have been pleased by the unusual plenitude, but there was something very disquieting about the change in routine.

  When we came home from school on Monday, Papa had already gone. Mama was punching down the bread dough with a fierce intensity.

  “When’s he coming back, Mama?” was as much as we dared ask.

  “When they get the cancer out,” said Mama. She had said the bad word, the one no one spoke when Uncle Ted got so sick that children couldn’t visit.

  After supper we lingered at the table to plan our schedules. Mama would do the milking. Bert would throw hay to the cows and to May and King, our gentle draft horses. And he would clean the stalls. I would pick the eggs and wash the dishes. Mama waited for Bert to complain about how early he would have to wake up to get all his chores done before school. Of course, had he, I would have interrupted with my opinion of the sour hen in the middle nest that always pecked at me. No one said a word.

  “Well, then.” Mama cleared her throat. “I suppose we had better get to it so we can get some sleep.”

  A week passed without word, then two. If we had more responsibility, we also had more privileges. No more wheedling and begging to listen to our favorite radio dramas. Mama let us have the radio on, even at the supper table. It took all the fun out of it. Some days, we were so worn out after our chores, we didn’t even think about the Lone Ranger or Sky King.

  Mama hardly spoke at all anymore. She sat in her rocking chair with her darning egg and an assortment of socks on her lap. If we looked at her, she would duck her head and peer intently at her stitches. We figured her eyes must be bothering her; they were red when she came out of her bedroom in the morning and they were still red when we came in from school in the afternoon and from our chores at night.

  And Christmas was coming. Bert and I already knew it was going to be the worst Christmas ever. We had enough potatoes and side pork and home-canned vegetables to last for months, but the perishables purchased on our last trip to town were gone. We gazed with longing at the sack lunches of the more fortunate neighbor children: bananas, grapes, even store-bought bread with fancy bologna. We held our chokecherry jelly sandwiches carefully under our desks between nibbles. After lunch, the other children regaled us with descriptions of the wonderful toys to be found in the Sears Roebuck catalog. We already knew about them; we had a catalog, too. But the cream can and the egg crate hadn’t moved from the basement since Papa had left, so we knew Mama’s purse was empty.

  “That stuff is for kids,” Bert and I scoffed.

  We decided that we would put our efforts into getting Mama through the holiday. We decorated the house with stars and bells cut from cereal boxes and silver canes fashioned from the pull strip of coffee cans. When school recessed for Christmas vacation, the teacher allowed us to bring the Christmas tree home. It didn’t look quite the same after two weeks in the warm schoolroom and being dragged a mile down the dirt road, but it made the house smell nice.

  Finally, it was Christmas Eve. Mama made rommegrot (a rich porridge made from pure cream), but there was no lutefisk (Swedish brined fish) that usually graced our holiday table. We had side pork with milk gravy, just like every other day. We hurried through the meal and then Bert and I coaxed Mama into the living room, intending to serenade her with all the Christmas carols we had learned for the school program. It didn’t seem to be working. Halfway through “Silent Night,” Mama excused herself and went to her room. We could hear her crying softly.

  She hadn’t exactly told us to go to bed, but we couldn’t think of anything else to do, either. By the time it was dark, the house was silent.

  It must have been near midnight when we were awakened by a bright light flashing on the bedroom wall. We knew what it meant: Someone was crossing the bridge by the schoolhouse. We rushed to the window and watched the car turn onto our road.

  We burst into Mama’s room. “Mama, Mama! There’s a car coming down the ditch road.”

  But Mama was already up, reaching into the back of her closet, pulling out the black dress she never wore. “I saw the lights,” she said.

  Mama donned the black dress and silk stockings, and smoothed her hair into a bun. Then she seated herself on the sofa and folded her hands in her lap.

  “Mama! They’re coming here! We’re getting company! Shouldn’t we go outside and see who it is?”

  “I know who it is,” sighed Mama, “and they will find their way to the house.”

  It took that long for Bert and me to realize that company in the middle of the night was unlikely to be a good thing. We fell silent, studying Mama in her black dress, realizing what it meant. I started to wail, and Bert pulled me into the kitchen.

  We watched as the car turned into the farmyard and drove all the way up to the house. There was a shuffling on the steps, but the expected knock never came. Instead, the door slowly opened and there stood Papa, his arms filled with packages.

  Bert rushed to the living room. “Mama — come — please. Come — now,” he stuttered.

  Mama stopped in the doorway and gazed at Papa as if he were an apparition. He dropped the packages and swept her into his arms, kissing her right in front of us.

  “I brought presents,” said Papa.

  “You are my present,” whispered Mama.

  Doris Olson is a retired executive residing in Red Wing, Minnesota. She fondly recalls her childhood in a Scandinavian farming community in northern Minnesota, where shared sacrifice added a rich texture to their bucolic lifestyle.

  A Christmas to Remember

  By Teresa Ambord

  HE TODDLED AROUND the corner and into the living room, where he stopped cold. His little mouth dropped open, and the light in Ryan’s eyes rivaled the glow of the lights on the Christmas tree. What he saw there were two big shiny Tonka toys, a tractor and a fire truck with a ladder. There were other packages, too, mostly from his grandparents and one or two small ones from me. But those would have to wait. He only had eyes for those trucks.

  I looked at Mike, who was looking at Ryan. I couldn’t tell whose eyes were brighter.

  “Those are for you, Ry,” I said.

  That was all the encouragement he needed. He ran to the fire truck, climbed on, and rode three laps around the living room on top of the truck. Then he hopped off and lay down on his belly, pushing the tractor and making engine noises.

  He’s such a boy, I thought. Looking at Mike, I could visualize him doing the same thing when he was a kid.

  Before long, Ryan had both Tonkas upside down, examining every inch. Ryan wanted to know every detail of every toy he had. If the Tonkas hadn’t been welded, he would’ve surely taken them apart to have a better look. He was Mike’s son all right. In fact, in only a few minutes, Mike was right down there with him.

  At two and a half, Ryan was the perfect age for Tonka trucks. At
thirty-three, Mike was the perfect age to enjoy them with his son. I’m not sure which of the two of them had the most fun.

  Eventually, we had to remind Ryan that he had other presents to open. With each one, he seemed happy and excited. What he really wanted, though, was just to play trucks.

  But there was something unusual about those Tonkas that Ryan didn’t notice. Tonka is famous for using standard colors on its toys, mostly school bus yellow. Ryan’s tractor was navy blue, and his fire truck was wine-colored with a silver ladder. These weren’t the Tonkas you buy in the store now. They were the good old hard metal ones no longer produced. For weeks, Mike had sat in his lonely little trailer in the evenings, cleaning, repairing, and sanding those trucks to make them good as new. Then he had painted them. Now he was getting the payoff for his labor of love. Ryan was in kid heaven.

  It had been a hard year for Mike, Ryan, and me. Only a few months earlier, I’d asked Mike to move out of our home permanently. We still cared for each other, but his alcoholism and all the bad things that came with it had finally succeeded in beating the life out of our marriage, and I’d given up trying. After the initial bitterness, we became friendly again. Though our marriage was definitely over, because of Ryan, there would always be tender bonds between us.

  The breakup left both of us financially drained. I felt dismal after Thanksgiving, when I realized that Christmas was coming soon and I had no money. I could manage to get a small tree and maybe after that, if I really squeezed, I could come up with five dollars to buy Ryan a few Hot Wheels. That was it. But com-pared to Mike, I was practically rolling in the dough. Of course, he would spend Christmas Day with us and share our tree. But I knew that he would be hard-pressed to have even one extra dollar to buy Ryan anything at all.

  It was depressing at best. I wanted so much to make a wonderful Christmas for Ryan. Not that he needed the toys, and not that gifts are the heart of Christmas. Ryan would be surrounded by love and celebration and the recognition of the true meaning of Christmas with or without presents. But I’d waited a long time to have a child. And I was anxious to experience the joy that parents feel when they put things under the tree that they know will delight their children.

  One afternoon in early December I was on my way home when I heard a man on the radio say that he had a yard full of old Tonka trucks that he was selling for two to three dollars each. They needed some TLC, but they were sturdy and fixable. Ryan had played with Tonkas at a friend’s house and adored them. It was the perfect gift for him, and I knew the perfect guy to do the fixing up.

  I was so excited, I didn’t even stop to call Mike and ask what he thought. He was still at work, anyway. I went straight to the address the man on the radio had given. It was just as he’d said: he had dozens of trucks, but they all needed lots of attention. I scoured the yard looking for the best of the bunch. Some of them had rubber parts that were broken, and I wasn’t sure how those could be fixed. Finally, I found two that were well worn but still had all their parts intact. I paid the guy four dollars and fifty cents, almost my total allotment for Christmas. He loaded the metal trucks into the trunk of my car, and I drove to the auto body and paint shop where Mike worked.

  Just as he was getting ready to leave, I pulled up next to his car and told him my idea: We could give Ryan a joint present. I bought the trucks, and he could fix them up like new. I was sure Mike had sandpaper and tools, though I wasn’t sure about paint. When I opened the trunk and showed him the trucks, he caught my enthusiasm — partly because he would have a great gift for Ryan, one that took Mike back to his own childhood and boyish delights, and partly because he would have a cool project to fill his lonely evenings. I expected him to be interested. But he was more than that. He was thrilled.

  As we stood there with the trunk open, Mike’s boss came out to see what the excitement was about. Mel had become a family friend, and he loved Ryan. He was about sixty, but I guess guys of any age still love toy trucks, because he had to pick them up and examine them right along with Mike.

  “What a great idea,” he said, turning the tractor around in his hands. “Real metal … how about that! Tell ya what, Mike. Feel free to use any tools or sandpaper in the shop. You can even take some home this weekend. And when you’re ready to paint, you can use whatever we have left over from spray jobs. Ryan’s gonna love these.”

  He was right. Ryan loved them at age two and a half, and he loves them now, at eighteen. He still has those two Tonkas. When he was old enough to understand, I explained to him how his dad had spent hours upon hours turning old trucks into new ones, just for him. Ryan no longer plays with his trucks, and his dad is gone. But he can pick them up at any time, look them over, and run his hands over their smooth surfaces. Someday, he might pass them on to his own children. For now, they serve as solid-metal proof that he was the target of a whole lot of love.

  Teresa Ambord lives in Anderson, California, with her teenage son and her best friend and faithful pooch, Annie. Freelance writing is a growing part of her life. She writes in many genres, but is happiest when writing humor pieces.

  Christmas Cards from Winston

  By Kathryn E. Livingston

  I HAVE A “junk” drawer in my office; within it are many treasures of no apparent value. There is a garlic press my mother-in-law bequeathed to me when her mother died, corks from the most delicious wines I’ve ever tasted, and scores of used erasers that come home from school with my kids every year in June, used, but still keepers. Worth saving, too, are the Christmas cards I receive every year from a “boy” named Winston.

  I met Winston forty years ago, when he moved in next door to my childhood home. Each year, his Christmas card goes into my junk drawer. I just can’t bear to throw it away.

  In last year’s card, Winston quoted a Nietzsche axiom that he’d lifted from Conan the Barbarian: “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” He was referring, I believe, to my life with three growing sons. Winston lives alone, or with a lady love, I’m not sure which, but I know he has no children. He has often referred to how different our lives are: mine, that of a married mother of three living in an urban New Jersey town not far from Manhattan, his in a tiny village somewhere in New Hampshire, where a street address is not even needed and one must drive for many miles to get so much as a slice of pizza.

  I cherish Winston’s Christmas cards. The holidays give us a reason to reconnect with people we value. And his cards remind me of how wondrous my life looks to someone whose path has diverged greatly from mine. Likewise, his holiday greetings give me a glimpse into the blessings of Winston’s life and into a fascinating world I might not otherwise know. I’ve never been to visit him in New Hampshire and probably never will, but I imagine him walking down a rose-lined lane to his mailbox, sitting in a garden of black-eyed Susans, or building (for he is a carpenter), or studying (for he is an academic), or quietly enjoying nature. I am intrigued by his quiet, solitary life among the wildflowers, just as he is fascinated by my life with my colorful, cacophonous family. Yet, there is no envy between us. We rejoice in one another’s happiness.

  Without Christmas cards, we would not connect in this way. We’ve tried e-mail, but for two kids who met in the fifties, its joy was fleeting. Phone conversations would be awkward, too. After all, I am married, and even though I was in fourth grade when my crush on Winston was sparked, my husband would be wary if I were to call Winston regularly.

  But Christmas cards, and the letters we tuck in with them, seem to be just the right way of “catching up” during the season of sharing. Because we write only once a year, we don’t expect the connection to change our day-to-day lives, though it most certainly enriches our inner lives. What we do expect of one another in that one card a year is honesty. We speak of our triumphs and milestones, as well as our tragedies, for example, when Winston lost his brother and I lost my mother. We relay new discoveries about life and love and ours
elves, made during the passing year. With paper and ink, we explore the big questions: Did I make a mistake? What do I fear? What do I want? Do I feel satisfied, or discontented? Am I really happy?

  When I met Winston he was a boy of ten. He wrote me letters in code, in pale, lemon juice ink that could be detected only by lighting a candle underneath the thin, white paper. We sailed paper airplanes into the flowering dogwood trees that lined our properties with notes on their wings: “When will you be home from school?” “Do you like me?”

  In the many years since those days of innocence, we have learned to abandon code and, in the spirit of Christmas and friendship, to commit our thoughts and truths to paper with candor and trust. No mere holiday greetings of cheer for us. We delve deeper, sharing what has transpired during the year and in our hearts, whether happy or sad. And the underlying message — that we still care, after all these years, about one another, about each other’s hopes and dreams and accomplishments — never changes.

  Christmas, to me, means many wonderful things. Among the most wondrous is my yearly card from Winston. The card will eventually go into my junk drawer, his message filed forever in my heart.

  Kathryn E. Livingston is a freelance writer living in Bergen County, New Jersey, with her family. The coauthor of The Secret Life of the Dyslexic Child and Parenting Partners, she has also published articles in national magazines and is currently (always) at work on a novel.

  Toy Soldiers

  By Pat Gallant

  T HE RIDES TO Pennsylvania were filled with anticipation. I preferred the train to driving. Something about trains charmed me. I waited anxiously for the train to pull in, eager to see my new baby cousin, representative of siblings I wished to have and didn’t.

  The downside to the trip was that my mother and grandparents always stayed at a motel and I slept at my aunt and uncle’s. Though I hated sleeping away from home, they were loving to me and their apartment was cheerful enough by day, filled with bright sunlight and a balcony overlooking a grassy knoll. But nights in the country were dark and scary, and there was an intangible chill that frightened me. I was a city girl used to city lights. When I visited, which I did nearly every Christmas and on summer vacations and other special occasions, I, of course, had to follow their rules. Also, there was a man in their house — my uncle. I wasn’t used to having a man in the house or even other children. I was accustomed to living alone with my mother since her divorce from my father.