A Round About Christmas Lesson

This is a Christmas story, in a roundabout way, maybe a long and tangled way all the back to 1954,but I think it's the best way

When I was five, and I’m sure I would have insisted I was five-and-a-half, my father’s parents came from their farm in Illinois to our house in Southern California to spend Christmas with us. My dad was in the Air Force, stationed at March Air Force Base, about a twenty minute drive from our Victorian Farmhouse on the corner of 6^th and C street in the sleepy farming  town of Perris, California; which is how we wound up moving there in 1950.

 

This is our beautiful house in 1962. When our military family transferred to  Germany it was rented and the renters chopped wood on the hardwood floor in the living room, ruining it. They also destroyed  and  It took 2 hard years to bring it back, but we did.

Getting my grandparents visiting from so far away was so exciting my brother and I couldn't stand still. Finally, mom said it was time to meet the train. We piled into the car, a lumbering dinosaur sized  blue Dodge Sedan, and headed up Highway 395.  The train came in to San Bernardino, about a 45 minute drive away in those days when 50 miles an hour was considered speedy. 

An actual family photo of the Super Chief in which my Grandparents were riding.

We got to the train station and my father asked  which platform the Super Chief from Chicago was arriving at? We bounced and hopped and jumped and made our way there firmly in tow. We stood on the platform and continued to bounce up and down with joy. until the train came thundering in right at my fingertips it seemed.  In my memory that train was  a steaming snorting steel monster that both fascinated me and scared me badly until I was about 12. 

I remember at 5, walking down the platform holding my mother’s hand tightly, scared of the noise and the big trains all around us, huge snorting engines, whistles, porters with carts with metal wheels and so many people! Suddenly the undercarriage of the train would hiss and disgorge a cloud of steam all over of us and then sit there humming like a cranky dragon. 

Grandma and Grandpa Groves

 I forgot the train because there they were! Stepping down from the train, Grandma held her handbag over one arm, she always called it her pocket book, and her train case was gripped firmly in the other hand.  My grandpa Floyd always wore a gray fedora and a badly fitting sport coat when he came to visit, which he took off as fast as possible. In my memories he always has a cigar clamped in his teeth.  When he wasn’t shoveled into the dress up jacket, my gramps wore bib overalls and one of those train engineer hats with a bill. He was a farmer, he was big and gruff and I loved him.

Grandma loved his dogs and his cigar, but he has a pipe in this picture.

Soon we were home and into the magical whirl of Christmas and Christmas morning.  That year I got a Jenny doll, a six inch tall inexpensive knock off version that didn’t have rooted hair or shoes that would come off. She was hard plastic, her shoes were painted on, her arms and legs were jointed and her eyes opened and shut. I adored her and the first thing I did was brush her beautiful blonde hair that wasn’t rooted. It ripped right off her head and left a fuzzy yellow covering and a tiny top knot. I remember being terribly shocked by the wad of blonde wig in my little brush.  I loved her anyway.  She had a satiny bonnet with red ribbon strings and I took it off and on and off and on and each time, I asked my grandpa to tie it in a bow for me. He did this patiently for a while and then he sat me on his lap, untied my shoe and proceeded to teach me to a tie a bow knot, telling me I needed to learn this here and now.  My grandfather was famous for his cranky foul temper and to this day it puzzles me and delights me that he patiently explained the mystery of a bow knot and helped me learn to tie my own shoes and my doll’s bonnet strings that Christmas morning so long ago.

I always had Buster Brown shoes

Fast forward to July, Christmas firmly in the rear view mirror and summer heat and sunshine are now the order of each and every day.  Jenny’s bonnet and alas, her dress, have been mislaid and she spends the day in my pocket wrapped in an old handkerchief of my father’s. I was sitting on the wide, cool cement front step leaning against the porch post and playing with my Jenny, attempting to wrap her hanky into some new and fetching article of clothing and enjoying doing nothing. 

 I was banished because my mother was having a lady lunch with her best friend, Nina Nelander, the City Librarian, and Nina’s best friend Sue. They were both from upstate New York and I loved the name of their town, Fishkill.  As an Air Force kid I was probably more in touch with geography than a lot of my peers, and I knew from my mom showing me on a map that Fishkill was clear across the United States and that it was near where the scary Headless Horseman was from. I was watching for Sue because I found her fascinating.

This is actually Jenny, wrapped in one of my father's hankies. Yes, I still have her.

Sue was an albino, she had white hair, white skin and pink eyes and she looked rather like a beautiful tall rabbit. She couldn’t see very well and she held things close to her eyes to see them. Thinking back, I imagine that bright California sun was torture to her in every way, but she never showed it. The gate creaked and Sue came up the walk way to the porch and asked me what I was holding. I showed her Jenny, feeling embarrassed that she was only wearing a handkerchief. She held my little doll up close to her eyes and turned her way and that, looking at her carefully. She finished and wrapped Jenny tightly up and handed her back to me with a smile and a thank you and went on into the coolness of the house. I didn’t think any more about it because grown-ups were just strange anyway.

Perris was a pretty old town and this hotel, closed by the time I we showed about 75 years later was still standing on Main Street. One four way stop sign and one street of retail. It was great.

I spent my early childhood in a very small town where everyone knew everyone else. For example, my friend Gayle’s dad worked at the grocery store and my friend Linda’s dad, Mr. Bliss, was the postman.  Nonetheless I was more than a little surprised two months later when Mr. Bliss pulled his station wagon up to our mailbox and called me over from my spot in the shady yard where I was playing with who else? Jenny.

Me

“Roxy! I have a package for you!” I remember being completely gobsmacked. A package for me? I was a kid, who would send me a package?  I opened the creaky iron gate and picked my way with bare feet, always, through the nasty patch of prickly goats heads thorns that grew everywhere. He handed me a shoebox tied up in white string, and sure enough there was my name and my address right on the box!  I ran through the gate and into the house calling for my mom, dizzy with excitement. She was puzzled too, but she got the scissors and cut the string and I lifted the top off the box.

Inside, packed in tissue was an entire wardrobe, handmade and beautifully cut and stitched for a bald six inch tall doll with shoes that didn’t come off. I remember the contents of that box like it was last week. The top layer was a black velvet cocktail dress with a matching brocade coat. There was a bridal gown and a veil; there was a negligee and a robe, and pants and shirts and suits and even little hats, sun dresses and swimming suits and slips and underwear, there was everything I could ever dream of.

Jenny tonight

Sue, who saw with difficulty, saw something in that scruffy little barefoot blonde kid on the porch with the bald doll and made that entire wardrobe by hand and sent it all the way from Fishkill to Perris for me. She made it for me.

I still have that bald little doll with the blonde topknot although those clothes are sadly gone from everything but my memory. But what is not gone is the lesson I learned from Sue.

Since that day I have known the greatest joy in giving is to give with no expectation of return. To simply know you have brought joy or hope or something positive and unexpected to someone is enough, and that in the end makes this a roundabout Christmas story.