I finished my shopping today. At least, I think I did. And you know what? I had fun doing it. I went out with a smile on my face. (It may or may not have had something to do with the fact that I'd left the kids at home.) I made a conscious decision to be that person who brightens the day of others. Instead of avoiding eye contact, I purposefully smiled at everyone. I wished people a merry Christmas. I started conversations with the cashiers and fellow shoppers in line near me. I put money into the Salvation Army bucket like I always do, but this time I stopped to talk with the gentleman ringing the bell. I've seen this same man ringing the bell at least 5 times this past month as I went to the grocery store. We chatted for a few minutes and wished each other a merry Christmas. And you know what? I had fun! And I know that people walked away from our encounters with smiles on their faces. Oh sure, they might have been smiling to themselves because they thought I was nuts, but I'm going to pretend that a little cheer from me brightened their days and they went on to smile at a stranger in the next store, and he went on to chat with a cashier in the next store, and so on and so forth.
Just be careful when you're out spreading holiday cheer. At one point, I had something in my eye and was blinking like crazy. I rubbed my eye and blinked some more. It still bothered me. I squinted my right eye and blinked a few more times. A little old man, comparing toothpaste brands and prices, looked up at me and, with a smile, winked back. "Oh no! I wasn't winking at you. I mean, you seem like a lovely man and I AM trying to spread holiday cheer today, but my eye, I have something in my eye. My eye hurts. I was just trying to get it out. By winking. But not AT you. Just winking in general. In fact, it wasn't really a wink at all. It was really more like a squinty-eyed blink. Honest. Ahem. OK, so I'm going to finish shopping now. Have a merry Christmas," I stammered as a quickly pushed my cart away. Leave it to me to inadvertently pick up an 84 year-old man at the grocery store.
And now for another Christmas pearl. This one is by Patricia Crisafulli. I met Patricia when I crashed a dinner party she held for Margaret McSweeney, Bonnie St. James, her husband, and son. And she welcomed me into her home like I was an old friend.
A Long Ago Christmas Memoryby Patricia Crisafulli
The old farm on a dirt road in the backwoods of northern New York State was described to me so many times, I can imagine the place, even though I never saw it: the big frame house with the wide porch, the pair of maple trees out front, and the barn in the back where my grandparents kept a cow or two, pigs and chickens, and a team of work horses.
That old house came alive for me in dozens of stories that my mother told, of how she and her sisters grew up there during the Depression. The stories had that long-ago feel not only because of the years that had passed, but also because of the era: tales of riding in a horse and buggy in the summer and a horse and sleigh in the winter. My grandfather owned an old Model A Ford, but the tires were patched beyond repair and there was no money for gasoline.
One story that has always stayed with me was of a particular Christmas in the early 1930s, a time my mother remember as the "depths of the Depression," and there was no money. In order to pay the interest on the mortgage, to keep the bank from foreclosing on the farm, my grandfather needed a relatively small sum. The amount I remember being told was $13, but for the little they had in those days it might as well have been $13,000.
Tested by trouble and sorrows, my grandparents relied on their deep and abiding faith. As Psalm 34 tells us, I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. The answer to their prayers was to be found right in their own backyard with gifts of the earth. My grandmother went into the woods to gather bushel baskets full of ground pine, with green sprouts like miniature boughs that spread in great patches along the earth. From willow branches she made hoops, around which she bound the ground pine to make wreathes.
She sat up all night making wreaths, enough to fill a large hamper basket, which my grandfather strapped to his back. At four in the morning, he hopped a ride on the milk train into Syracuse, where he went door-to-door selling wreathes. Night after night, my grandmother made wreaths, and day after day my grandfather sold them.
As Christmas approached, my grandmother had saved coupons that came in tins of coffee to get a Kewpie doll for her daughters. The only other things she gave them were mittens she knit herself.
Then on Christmas Eve, my grandfather came home from the last day of selling wreaths, exhausted but relieved. The farm was safe for another year. From what he had earned, he had a dime left over, which he spent on his beloved wife to buy her a powder puff. That night, my grandmother gave him her surprise: enough money from selling butter and eggs all year to buy four new tires for the Model A Ford.
Hearing this story as a child, my head was too full of the Sears & Roebuck "Wish Book" catalog to really comprehend it. As an adult, I try to fathom living with no money at all. What lingers in my heart, however, is the love of my grandparents for each other: the dashing young American soldier in World War I and the beautiful French girl he met overseas and then returned to her country to marry.
Many years, thousands of miles, and untold hardships later, that love continued. During a very dark December, they found a way together to keep the farm and the family together. And so it would always be for them.
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Patricia Crisafulli is a writer, published author, and founder of www.FaithHopeandFiction.com, a monthly e-literary magazine with stories, essays, and poetry to inspire and entertain.
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