There were four of us children for all but my first four Christmases , as I am child number three and my brother Mark wasn’t born yet.. My earliest memories of Christmas are of our home in a cozy suburb of Montreal called Town of Mount Royal. They were magical and precious . Our home had a fireplace which my dad lit most evenings after supper (there is a recent by-law in place now prohibiting wood-burning fireplaces in the entire city). My dad put up lights in the window. The window in the den was divided into many different panes in a grid. My dad (being an engineer) first put in eyelets and strung twine in horizontal rows. He then measured and attached each light exactly in the centre of each pane. Two lights at the end of the string fit into holes in a papier-mâché Creche that one year needed a new Jesus as the dog chewed his head off.

During the day the window looked like a bunch of haphazard wires, but come nightfall, like magic, looked like a box of candy. It really was like a Christmas Card. Coming home in the dark after a day of skiing up north was so welcoming with the glow of those lights. One year my dad tried all the same colour, but it wasn’t the same. 

The standing joke in our family was the “bushiness” of the tree that my father selected each year. My dad was not one to spend his dough on frivolities like the trees that were lit up and double the cost of the trees at the ends of rows or behind healthier, more robust ones. No Fraser Fir tree for us, no sir! Why spend $12 when you can get the “same tree” for $8. My Dad was the “Charlie Brown” of tree selection. I am not sure if my memory of these trees has been somehow shaped and influenced by Charlie Brown. I remember needles falling immediately upon placement of the tree and looking at a new tree each year and my mum exclaiming that next year we’d get a bushier one. 

We had always gone “Up North” (the Laurentians) in all seasons and my parents rented cottages on lakes in summer and on hills in winter. One year, they happened upon and bought a chalet on a mountain between St. Sauveur-des-Monts and Ste. Adele. This was to be the new family home in a few years, but was for now a second home. We still spent Christmas in the city though because our family always went to church on Christmas Day, and not just because my younger brother and I sang in the Cathedral choir. Church before presents.

The year my voice changed, so did our family. My older brother and sister had both left home to go to college and my dad was “downsized” from his job as an Aeronautical Engineer at Canadair. My parents decided to sell one of the houses. They sold the one in the city, and we became “up-northers” and my dad got a new job when he convinced the Transport Development Agency that they needed him as a project engineer.

The house up north had three hectares of forest. much of it deciduous, but many stands of coniferous trees on our land. Our family now didn’t have to buy a tree, we could select and harvest our own. In October, My dad marked a tree with a ribbon that was to be our “bushy one”. The first year, he couldn’t find the ribbon (below the snow line…doh) so he selected a tree at random and handed me the Swede saw. 

As we all got older the need for bushiness seemed to diminish. We still put on the same ornaments that we had been using since I was little. My dad let us select the trees. Never bushy. They looked bushy in the bush, but always looked scrawny in the living room. My mum would start the Turkey and we still went to church before presents, but the Up North church was a cozy log cabin with a cheesy electric organ and the music (although familiar) was less than spectacular. Eventually we decided to go on Christmas Eve, and that became the new tradition. As we all grew and had “significant others” members of the family would have to split their times between our family and the in-laws, and then with kids, my older siblings would come “Boxing Day”. My parents, my younger brother and I maintained this tradition until I was well into my thirties. When my first daughter arrived, she and subsequent additions to the family followed suit. The trees in those last years were puny. a mere token, but the love and warmth of family was not.

Then my dad got sick. He saw the writing on the wall and they decided to “downsize” and they moved to an apartment for seniors. As part of the downsizing, things were given to us kids and some things were sold or donated to charity. Somehow, I got most of the Christmas ornaments. I decided that we would have a tree in our home in the city for the first time in my adult life. It became a tradition of me taking the girls to select a tree. It was always fun! We never went “all out”, but I was not as chintzy as my dad, and usually the tree we chose was fairly bushy. I even splurged each year and bought matching shiny blue balls. The girls made things. Macaroni strings, popcorn, wax and dried flowers, all sorts of things. Not to mention ornaments that had been given to me by students over the years.

Larger family occasions must now be spent in restaurants or hotels or at my older brother’s. Much of the magic and fabric of the season was fading. Even the weather seemed to be moving. The tall white snowbanks of my youth seemed to be replaced with grey slush some years and no snow some years. 

The music seemed to be more and more commercial and I missed the wonderful carols and the beautiful and accurate harmony of choral singing. My brother and I put together a little choir one year to do some carolling and that ignited something in me again, but  Alas, he had to move away for work. All my “homes” were disappearing. My father died, my mum relocated to Ottawa, my sister moved an hour past Ottawa,  my younger brother had my mum down to New York where he lives. 

My own home was faltering. Tension and stress and broken communication took their toll and before the end. No one was thriving. It was cold. I didn’t have the will to put up a tree in that final year together. The next year was better in some ways and worse in others. The mother of my children was away for several months and although the house was quiet and calm, the girls and I were at a low ebb. My brother, knowing this, invited us to New York to share Christmas with his family. No tree.

When my house needed to be sold to completely liquidate the marriage, I had to leave so many things that once had great importance. I had to sell my record collection. 2,500 lps gone. As the possession date approached, things had to be moved. I put so much on the curb to be taken away. All the skis, skates, funky rat pack stuff that accumulates over 20 years and more. I threw away all the Christmas stuff. I threw away and donated furniture and clothes and books. Little pieces of my heart that were now worthless to me. 

My new life that I embarked upon has different Christmas traditions that I am still trying to balance with my own needs and desires. I have a loving and understanding partner who was not brought up in the church, but who nonetheless has her own traditions of family and gift giving and decorating. I don’t love her ornaments in the same way she does, but I learned that she loved them and has a story about each of them, holding on to memories of loved ones now departed and sentiments that preceded my arrival on the scene. Her love for them is another thing to love about her.

I was awakened and wrote this poem:

My Ornaments are gone 

Trifles that meant something 

sometime, somewhere

….gone….

That tied me to tinsel memories

Of gathered pines and home

I left them on the curb of downsize divorce

I never missed them until just now

Four seasons into something new.

Her ornaments are testaments too 

Now six seasons into that something new, and my spirit of Christmas has been awakened by a gift that we decided to give to each other. 

We decided to make a CD in the studio of songs we both love and give all of  the proceeds to charity. We both love making music together and we don’t really need or want conventional gifts from each other. We are lucky. We have enough. Giving to ones that don’t have enough reminds me of all the lessons I have learned from my family. 

Away from the rampant consumerism and the darker side of humanity and the religious hypocrites that I have always abhorred, I have realized that doing something kind for others is that elusive bushy tree. Our gift of music is amplified by the love and support and intimate contact we have had with so many people because of this project.

Peace On Earth, Good Will To All!

The parking lot should have been the omen to avoid entering Costco today. There were vehicles blocking every “corridor” of the parking lot. Some were stacked up like planes over LaGuardia on a stormy day. There was one incident of parking space rage that I witnessed. Two drivers that hadn’t seen each other waiting were vying for the same spot. I went to the far reaches of the lot and was fortunate to notice a car leaving. I hiked the distance to the front door and passed row upon row of what looked like prairie schooners in a wagon train, but were actually carts stuffed way past capacity with crap. One woman was struggling with two carts brimming over. She was pulling one and pushing the other. It was drizzling. No one was smiling.

I had decided to go “off hours” to avoid this very scenario. I have to make a very large spinach salad for a big family party tomorrow, so I figured Costco might have spinach in a hefty package to suit my needs. I had a list of things in my head that I was asked to pick up. Toilet paper, chocolate chips for baking, small individual packs of dark Swiss chocolate (sold by the thousand) and some smoked cheddar cheese which I like. I also scored a huge box of a cereal I recently discovered called Bran Buds.

Navigating inside the store was like traversing a mine field (without the fatal explosions) or a four lane highway where at any given moment a semi-trailer might stop in the middle. Sometimes at a 45 degree angle blocking several lanes. The abrupt u-turners and impatient passers and the waddling oglers and the deserted full carts in mid-aisle made this quest for spinach irritating, but more interesting.

When I got to the north pole (huge refrigerated room filled with perishables) there were dozens of pallets of all sorts of produce. One empty pallet where the spinach should have been. Wtf? Is Friday the day they have a run on spinach? Popeye’s birthday? What?!?!

My mood darkened.

I slalomed my way back to the front of the store which I swear is in a different postal code than the rear and parked in a promising looking line. By promising, I mean 8 single carts and no prairie schooners. In the next line over was a woman whose cart had so much crap on it that it defied the laws of physics and gravity. On the top of this mobile dung heap was a box containing a “guitar”. Need I say that Costco is not a place where you should buy a guitar. It is not a “deal”. It depressed me. Some kid who perhaps has an interest in music will have it killed by a shitty instrument that won’t tune and sounds like rubber bands stretched over a Corn Flakes box. It will sit under a bed until some future garage sale where it will be sold to some other loser.

The same woman was actually bragging to the woman behind her that “This is nothing! I will have to come back twice this afternoon”. I needed a barf bag quick, but the trek to aisle X128 would have taken hours, and I only needed one. I looked at my meagre cart with 7 items and still cost $91.00 and looked back at hers and figured it was four times as much. From what I could make out it looked like crap dressed up in flashy boxes and overpriced.

The rampant consumerism and excess and waste at this time of the year depresses me and flies in the face of love and charity and peace on earth.

Maybe I was more irritated because of a “garment malfunction” in the middle of this “splurge fest”. I come from a long line of people who don’t throw out their underwear. Some of us Hanchets are really cheap in this regard. The last pair of underwear I inherited from my dad 16 years ago (yes, I wore a dead guy’s underwear) is now disposed of. It was way past “threadbare”. It was way past opaque. It was way past functional. That pair could not even hold a fart. There was practically no material left. Took 16 years to throw them out, and I am one of the best in this department. My older brother actually has a pair of the world’s ugliest briefs in a picture frame. His wife found them at the back of his drawer (pun intended) and laughed so hard when he said he still wore them when all the rest were in the laundry. She framed them to shame him and had a little hammer attached and a sign to break glass in an emergecy. There was talk about what if you had to go to the hospital wearing those,etc.

I still keep two pair of underwear that have weakened elastics. I keep meaning to throw them out, but “you never know when they might be needed”. They look ok, they feel ok, but half-way through the day the start to slip. Every time I put them on, I fool myself into thinking that “these aren’t the ones” and that somehow “today will be different.”

As I was standing there in line I felt them slipping down almost like a screen in the movie theatre descending. There is no discreet way to hoist them back up again in a huge store brimming with consumers. I longed to reach in and pull them up. I felt like a hot-crossed bun with that elastic forming a perfect cross across my butt. Very uncomfortable. As I trekked back to the car, they slipped even farther until they settled at the top of the inside of my pants legs. At the car, with my hands finally free and no-one looking, I managed to retrieve them and get on with things. I vowed to not put them in the laundry, but to chuck them and buy several packs this week-end. Maybe when I go out to buy spinach.

In those years where I have had a student teacher, as the student teacher progressed, I was supposed to leave him/her alone so they could garner valuable experience (sink or swim) and I would need a place to be other than my classroom while the student teacher taught.

It’s hard to find a quiet place in a school that is bursting at the seams with energetic young children. The staff room is too noisy and there are no other spots to work or to think in peace.

One place that can generally be trusted to be fairly quiet and offer respite from the mayhem beyond, is the caretaker’s room. Ironically the least clean room in the school, it is more like a garage than an office. The caretaker is seldom there, and suggested I use it when I need it. It is set up as sort of a man-cave.

One day, suffering a migraine, but blessed with an hour of “nothing to do” I sat  in a rickety old armchair among the paper towels and supplies and set about breathing exercises and set to meditate. The room has blinding fluorescent lighting or cozy soft lighting from 30 watt bulb in a standing lamp in the corner. Naturally I chose the subdued lighting.

I was sitting absolutely still with my eyes closed when I heard someone else enter the room and start a phone conversation. I continued meditating with my eyes shut until I realized that my colleague had not seen me and was engrossed in a conversation of a highly personal and sensitive nature that I was sure she wanted to be private . I was faced with a dilemma. If I were to move or make noise, that might scare or shock her and might have been an uncomfortable and unnecessary scene. It was too far beyond the point where I could have cleared my throat and left gracefully. I decided to just stay still and eventually the phone call ended and my colleague left the room.

I now had a further dilemma. I had involuntarily heard a highly personal conversation and though undetected, I felt ashamed. It felt like a betrayal even though I had done nothing “wrong” per se, but I felt compelled to let my colleague know that I had heard, and reassure her that I could be trusted with her secret, and if she needed to talk, I am a good listener. Not doing so would have been unauthentic on my part.

I approached her in private after the children had gone home and told her that I sometimes use the caretaker’s room to meditate and that she had not seen me earlier, but I had heard her entire phone call and I was sorry and I did not mean to “eavesdrop”.

The look of horror on her face is not something I will easily forget. She had recently been betrayed by someone of my gender and here I was knowing details that only her therapist or lawyer should know. She was desperate that no-one else should know her problems and pleaded with me to keep it secret. She was clearly upset that I knew. I assured her that my fealty could be counted on and my experience in maintaining anonymity is something she could rely on and if she needed to talk, I was there for her. She said we should never speak of it.

Months passed and not a word was spoken about it between us. Over a year passed and one day my colleague came to me to thank me for keeping my word. We already admired each other’s skill in the classroom, but something softened in her and we became friends and she opened up about the difficulties she was facing and I listened and encouraged her using my own experience, strength and hope.

I think we both learned different things  about human nature through the odd details of this story. Something about loyalty and dignity. I am grateful for her friendship and I am glad that she no longer has the huge upheavals that set this story in motion.