From the Improvement Era, December 1968 –

A Family Affair

By Lucy Parr

It was the day before the day before the day before – well, anyway, there were only five days until Christmas. Stevie had demanded the latest countdown before he would begin dressing for breakfast. Only five days! And that simply was not enough time for all that remained to be done.

Ellen Reid, constantly on the verge of jumping to her feet, forced herself to remain seated, outwardly calm. “Mealtime must be calm and pleasant.” How often she had reminded the children of that fact. “It takes no longer to finish a meal at the table than on the wing.”

Oh, how many things she needed to be doing this very minnte, things far more important than eating. But if she got up, the children would believe that that excused them, and what voluminous little store-houses their memories were for the least infraction.

“Mom! That’s mustard!” Mike yelped, bringing Ellen from the depths of her reverie.

And so it was – spread thickly over her breakfast toast.

“How in the world –?” she cried.

“You put the jar on the table yourself,” Denna giggled. “Didn’t she. Daddy? We’ve all been waiting to see how soon you’d catch on. But Mike spoiled the fun.”

“Well, I should hope so. Your own mother!”

Denna grew -serious. “Is my own mother going to remember about finishing my costume for the school program tonight?”

“Oh, no!” Ellen groaned. “It’s a good thing you reminded me. I’ve more than a jillion other things to do today.”

“Put that on the top of the pile, huh, Mom? I simply have to look good.” Such a vain, lovely creature she was becoming at ten. “You know, Trudi Dale’s mother is buying her costume, and I have to stand right next to Trudi all evening. So be sure it’s good, huh?”

Attempting to keep impatience from her voice, wondering how they would find time even to attend the program, Ellen promised, “I’ll try. I’ll try, and try, and try –”

“Hey, Ma! Your needle’s stuck,” Mike teased.

At 13, Mike was slightly impertinent, though actually a good boy, not a troublemaker as were many other boys his age.

As Jim pushed his chair back from the table, Ellen glanced up quickly. “Dear, check as closely as you can, discreetly, how many from the office will be dropping in for the open house Christmas afternoon. I need some idea how many to plan for.”

“Better count on the whole outfit,” Jim laughed. “The fame of your buffets has spread far and wide.”

“Oh, and I must remember those strange little crackers that Mr. Bennett always expects.” Ellen popped from her chair now, as if suddenly released when Jim’s rising had disturbed the family circle.

Reaching for dishes to place in the sink even as she rose, Ellen turned back to Mike. “Come on, tiger. Better get that food inside. The school bus arrives in ten minutes. And as the ads say – ‘it’s best to brush after every meal.'”

“But I have to take time to chew,” he protested.

“Then chew!” Ellen snapped, catching Jim’s goodbye kiss somewhere in the region of her right ear.

“Try to take it a little easy, honey,” Jim urged.

“Uh-huh!” she grimaced. “It’s Christmas time, remember?”

“How could I ever forget, around here. The original wall-to-wall Christmas.” He smiled waiTnly and repeated, “But do take it easy, Ellie. Christmas will come, even if you don’t have the last perfect bow on every package.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Ellen said. “That’s one thing I must get today. I’ll have to rewrap the packages for Les and Arda – they clash so. I should have done them at the same time.”

Turning to the sink once more, she barely caught the wink exchanged by Jim and Mike as Jim departed. Great conspirators, those two were. But they both enjoyed the fruits of her “fuzzing and fruming,” as five-year-old Stevie called the rush and excitement.

“There’s the bus, half a minute early,” Ellen called, but Mike was gone.

She caught sight of him pounding down the walk and up the steps into the snapping jaws of the yellow monster that, after the briefest of pauses, went on around the corner. Any day now Mike was going to misjudge Hank Leeds’ reaction time on that bus door, and there would be two Mike Reids, snapped neatly down the center – and most school mornings one Mike Reid was almost more than she could contend with.

Ellen let her breath out in a whoosh of relief at this one more safe deliverance and turned back to the dishes. She rushed through the most essential of the morning chores, deciding to leave Denna’s costume until afternoon. It would be best to get her trip to town finished early.

What a gem Jim was, she thought, to leave her the car, when it meant he must make a bus transfer each way. She should have been more patient with him this morning – in fact, with all of them. She should at least have given him a proper kiss.

But it wasn’t quite fair, the way they all ganged up to tease her that way just because she was deep in the rush of Christmas preparations. Maybe she was a perfectionist; maybe she did wear herself out making everything just right. But, oh, they did have a good Christmas – ” not just a good one, but a beautiful one. Everyone said so, even Jim and the children.

“Ours is the prettiest house on the whole street,” Denna had said in awe last year.

“Perhaps even the prettiest in the entire world,” Jim had added. “And we have the tiredest mother in captivity.” But his smile had said it was lovely, and lovable of her to make it this way for them.

It was – well, it had almost become a tradition with her. “Ellen’s house is the warmest, the brightest, the most beautiful.” In her extra care of selection and imaginative wrappings, she made up for the fact that her gifts were not as expensive as the ones Arda and Madeline always brought. She simply had to send the small packages of remembrance to the out-of-town aunts, both hers and Jim’s, not to mention the myriad of cards, with letters in many of them.

Jim had scolded again this year. “What do you care if Anna Mae’s boy wears braces on his teeth? Or that Joan’s kids had the flu for three days last October? Or that Sara’s Becky is well on the way to becoming a child prodigy at the piano? You haven’t seen any of them in over ten years. Maybe you wouldn’t recognize any one of them.”

But she did care. And she wrote a real letter to them just once a year.

“Then write sometime other than the rushed holiday season,” Jim had reasoned.

“Oh, but it’s somehow more special now,” she had insisted.

And she had done it – as always. And now there was all this shopping to be finished, and baking to begin, and Denna’s costume – as always.

Ellen rushed Stevie into his coat and cap, impatient at the way he wanted to dawdle over the Christmas coloring book she had bought last week. What a boon that had been, keeping him from incessantly asking, “Whatcha doing now, Mamma? Whatcha making now, huh?”

“See how far I got now. Mamma,” he boasted. “See, I got all the toys and the elf pictures finished. I got Santa almost ready to come down the chimney now.”

“That’s fine, dear,” she answered, absentmindedly. “Come on.”

Stevie held back, a challenge in his eyes and voice. “You didn’t even see!”

“I will later. Til take a long time to look through your whole book soon. But we have to go now.” Her voice rose at the end, and with an effort Ellen pulled it down to normal. “Please, Stevie. This is no time to be stubborn. We’ll have so much fun later, when everything is ready.”

If everything is ever ready, she added to herself, as he followed reluctantly.

They dashed from one store to another, frantically marking items off the endless list, having to backtrack for things that Ellen couldn’t decide on until she had compared at other shops.

Stevie had long since grown quiet and listless, and Ellen couldn’t help wishing they were through. She’d like to call it quits too. Denna’s costume hung over her mind like the sword of Damocles. Already she had run past the time she should have allowed for this shopping, but she simply couldn’t make time for a trip to town tomorrow.

She was irritable and tense by the time they pushed through the door at Maybanks. “‘Tis the season to be jolly …” The words rang out from a loudspeaker overhead.

“And we will – we will,” she promised, “in just a few days.”

Ellen caught a sharp breath, quickly stepping behind a display. She hadn’t time for a long discussion with Jan Parry today, as much as she ordinarily en- joyed her friend’s eager prattling. But she needn’t have worried. Jan was as rushed and distracted as she. It was with a feeling of shocked recognition that Ellen saw the frown on Jan’s face, the impatience with which the other woman grasped four-year-old Lisa’s hand and pulled her away from the nearby toy display.

“We haven’t time!” Jan snapped.

They moved away, but not before Ellen heard the little girl’s plaintive cry, “Haven’t we got time to wish for what Santa will bring? Not even time for that. Mommy?”

There was no joy in the child’s face, only defeat. And Ellen felt an answering ache in her own heart.

Not even time for the fun of Christmas, the anticipation?

What did all the rest mean without that, at least to a child?

She had been robbing Stevie and the older ones as surely as if she had taken something of theirs with no intention of returning it, for she never could replace these childhood Christmases once they were gone.

Promises … She continually offered them promises for the future in place of the fun that should be a part of now.

Ellen stood very still, striving for control of the tumult within her.

“Mamma? Mamma, are you all right?” There was real concern in Stevie’s voice.

With an effort, Ellen forced a smile to her lips. “Oh, honey, I’m just fine.” She hugged him close. “Maybe I’m finer than for a long, long time.”

He wouldn’t understand that, but he did understand when she said, “I’m tired of shopping.” There was one twinge of regret about the several items that still remained on her list, but impatiently she pushed that aside.

Stevie’s hand was warm in her own. “Let’s just watch the trains go swishing around their twisty little tracks until we’re tired of that,” she suggested. “Then we’ll go home and finish Denna’s costume.”

“That old costume will have to wait a jillion minutes,” he giggled. ” ‘Cause I sure do like to watch the trains – now that you’re not cross any more.”

His hand pressed tightly against Ellen’s as they walked among the toys. She did not need to see his face to know the joy it would be mirroring. And as she held close to her son’s childish eagerness, she planned.

The tree – there was no reason why the children could not help trim that. They would enjoy sharing in that part of Christmas. Their fun would more than make up for a few misplaced ornaments.

Mike could make the big wreath for the front door. He had shown a definite creative ability since starting at junior high – at least Miss Adams said so, and it hadn’t sounded like mere PTA chatter.

They might even get out that dog-eared book. They had read from it often when the first two were little. “‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house .. .” Stevie would like that, and the others were not too old, either, not when it was a family affair.

A family affair, she thought eagerly.

Perhaps Jim was right, and Christmas would come. And if the packages for Les and Arda did clash, they could just be placed at opposite sides of the tree.

Much later, after Denna’s costume was finished, the older children had been clued in on the new rules of Christmas, and a fine dinner had been eaten before time to leave for Denna’s program Ellen found herself humming, “‘Tis the season to be jolly …”

“‘Tis indeed! ‘Tis indeed!” she laughed.

This unfamiliar giddiness! – might she be catching something?

At that moment Jim appeared, with the three children wedged in the doorway around him.

“See, I told you. Daddy,” Stevie crowed. “We’re all going to be part of Christmas this time. Mamma said so herself.”

“Well, well, well,” Jim marveled. “So ’tis truly to be a merry Christmas for one and all – even for Santa’s busiest helper herself.”

“It could be an awful failure,” Ellen cautioned. “Without all that ‘fuzzing and fruming,’ everything might fall apart.”

“Then we’ll all help put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” Jim laughed. “But for now we’ll worry about the present.” He turned to the children. “I vote to keep it just the way it is this minute – with your mother prettier than she’s ever been.”

“Aye, aye,” Mike shouted. And Denna agreed.

“I do, too,” Stevie added. “I like for merry Christmas to be at our house.”

She had been catching something, all right, Ellen thought in wonder – an advanced case of Christmas spirit, an epidemic that had spread to all of them.