Dear Claire;

Mary had a baby, my Lord;
The people keep coming but the train is gone.
(Negro Spiritual)


Dear Claire;

What a lovely coincidence that I’m writing about our Christmas with Sophie during this holiday time. I love the line in A Child’s Christmas in Wales where the little boy dips his mittened hand in the snow and brings up a memory from some Christmas long ago. You and I had one such magical Christmas when we were with Sophie, whose memories have lasted me all these years.

At school the snow has finally come to transform the playground. The kids are thrilled. It reminds me that the memories that I have of that time are winter memories too. We had never had a winter with snow, you and I. Boots, the burrowing dog, showed us how to enjoy it, to roll in it, and to cover ourselves with its magic. I remember Sophie saying that it was a particularly snowy winter that year; adults complained and shovelled, children were enchanted. Does the first snow of the season ever stop being magical in its power to transform everything into an object of beauty?

I also remember being surprised by all of the excitement around Christmas itself. Because we didn’t have a television in Vancouver, we hadn’t been exposed to the holiday theme that seeps into every TV commercial and show from late October until the New Year. Also, at Mandala Rising, the parents set much of the curriculum and they were more interested in maintaining the foundations of the collective ideals and the environmental movement. We never did much colouring of Rudolph or singing about Frosty.

Here in this new suburban world I was bewitched by the whole spectacle that was December, with all of its elaborate decorations of houses and malls decked out in amazing displays of lights and intricate arrangements. I bought into all of the beauty with abandon, but I still felt like an outsider, an exchange student from some other land, a delighted spectator not wanting to show my ignorance by admitting that I didn’t know the words to the Christmas carols, or the details of the story of when Jesus was born.

It was one day in early December of that year, we were gluing cotton-ball snow to a mural scene in my classroom when I had a strange flash to a time at my school back home when we were working with lamb’s wool on a collage: I realized with a jolt that I had no idea if I would be coming back to Centennial Park school after the holidays. My insides were squeezed with panic, like waking suddenly from a threatening dream to wonder what else could startle me, what other worries I could have forgotten about. I felt as if I had been lulled into a place of numbing peace, of false hope, of becoming accustomed to the luxury of not having to take care of things the way I had to at home.

That night I asked Sophie if I would be returning to my school in Vancouver after the holidays. She seemed shocked by the question. As it happened Bill had called her just that day to deliver two pieces of news: the first was that he was coming to Ontario to visit us for Christmas, and the second was that it would only be a visit and he would not be taking us back with him. Sophie said that she had been wondering all day how to speak to me of this development and then…here I was, asking the question right out. “When am I going to learn how grown up you are?” Sophie said to me, putting her arm around my shoulder and pulling me to her. We hugged and she kissed the top of my forehead. I was happy. I wanted us to stay where we were. I wanted to be hugged.

One of the greatest reasons that I wanted us to stay with Sophie is that you were more peaceful there than you had been since coming home from your time in the hospital. Your behaviour didn’t actually change all that much while we were Sophie; in fact I think if we counted your “episodes” (as Molly called them) of anxious screaming, there may have been just as many of them, but that was because your life with Sophie and Molly was more exposed to new experiences than it had been with mom. You got out into the real world and were tested by new things in a way that you never had been when you were alone with mom in the apartment. I could see that you were becoming more able to tolerate noises on the streets or in the mall. At Molly’s house you had learned that the kids were not a threat. You just seemed more resilient.

Bill did come to spend Christmas with us. Sophie and I went to the airport to pick him up one night while you slept over at Molly’s. I remember feeling so uncertain, fretting over how I would look to him – like waiting for a blind date. Isn’t that odd? Why would I think of Bill as a stranger? Until a few months before we had never spent more than a few days apart in my whole life. I think I was afraid that he might have become a stranger to my heart in how we had both changed so much over the past year.

In writing this, I just realized that it had only been a little over a year since you and mom got sick. At that time, it seemed to me that everything that I remembered of my life in Vancouver, before we went to stay with Sophie, was all about a lifetime of caring for you and mom.

As we drove to the airport I wondered which Bill I would meet there? My playmate from summer trips to the beach? The busy law student who spent hours at the library then kissed us goodnight? The harried father who spent nine months putting band-aids on the rapidly sinking lifeboat that held his broken family? Would he be someone entirely new to me? Would he be as nervous as I was?

We got to the airport about fifteen minutes before the plane was due to land only to find that it was delayed another forty minutes. We walked around for a bit but soon exhausted anything of interest that there was to see at that late hour. We sat down and after a few minutes I realized that I was thinking of how different I would feel if Bill was coming to take us home. From somewhere I found the courage to ask the question that was most important to me.

“Sophie, are you glad that Claire and I are going to stay with you?” I remember very clearly, forming this question in my head. Even then, the Socratic teacher in me knew the value of asking a question which makes obvious the desired response. I wanted her to be glad, and I had to let her know that I wanted to stay.

Sophie put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me to her. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I love you both very much.” She said clasping her hands around my shoulders. “It’s been an interesting few months, hasn’t it? But now that we’re all settled in, I wouldn’t want to change a thing.” After some thought she added, as if she felt that she should: “You know, Star, someday your mom will be better, and she and Bill will want you to come and live with them.”

I didn’t know how to explain to her that mom had never said that she loved me, and that I never really felt as close to her, as cherished or as nurtured by her as Sophie made me feel.

“Anyway, we’re together now,” she said, “And that’s what matters.” She thought carefully for a moment then added: “I like your dad. He’s a good guy and I’m glad that he’s going to be with us for Christmas.” I loved Sophie so much; she could always say the right thing to put my fears to rest. Now I could enjoy the visit with Bill without worrying about the betrayal of bonds or what our future might hold.

When the plane finally arrived and Bill came through the doors with the other passengers, I was surprised at how different he looked. Not different from how I remembered him, but different from the other people around the airport. I had gotten used to suburban Toronto standards, and Bill’s long pony tail, barely held together with a leather thong, his chest length beard, the Tibetan beads and Himalayan jacket, made him look like he had come from a different land: a traveler from my home country to our new, sanitized world in “Organized Ontario” as he calls it.

We didn’t run to meet each other but quietly walked towards a long embrace. All the smells of home came back to me in his sweater and jacket. He held me at arm’s length, then hugged me again saying how old I looked, how tall I had gotten. His tone was more of regret than surprise. We went to the carousel to claim his knapsack and a box that he had shipped.

It was late, and I remember falling asleep in the back seat of Sophie’s car to the sound of their small talk – finding their way around and through the maze of words that should be spoken: about us, about mom, about life.

The next morning the three of us went to pick you up at Molly’s. I was the first one through the door so I didn’t notice that Sophie and Bill had stopped on the walkway to the house. When I looked back through the window, I could see Sophie taking Bill’s arm and patting it with her hand, reassuring him. Bill walked slowly up the stairs and came in to meet Molly. As I look back on that day from my adult perspective, I’m amazed to think of how many different emotions would have been converging on him as he came to see you. He had finally recognized that you were living in a world that was not often accessed by the rest of us. Did he feel guilt for not seeing it sooner, regret that you were this way, confusion as to how to interpret and understand where your soul passed its days? Whatever he felt, it was keeping him focused on his need to find a way to connect with you.

I showed Bill the way to the playroom and he stopped for some time at the doorway, his gaze fixed on where you were with your back to us: motionless, sitting with one of Molly’s cookie tins between your legs, touching the smooth edges of the plastic cookie cutters that it held. I broke away and went to you, being careful to circle around so that you would see me coming. I gave you a kiss on the curls (I loved the smell of Molly’s shampoo in your hair). You didn’t look up. I went and turned on the TV and sat near you, watching the silent cartoons – their jolting noise would often make you nervous.

Bill kept his distance at first and sat down in the overstuffed rocker in the corner behind you. Sophie and Molly stayed in the kitchen drinking coffee, letting us be together. Bill sat there for such a long time watching you. As the TV distracted one part of my brain, the other part imagined how he must be seeing you. He was completely focused, moving at a rhythm that was so different from the flying pace that he had always kept up when we were with him at home. I didn’t ever remember Bill being so still – it reminded me of how you could be, transfixed by something in your hands.

After a while, I went over to the rocker and crawled up on his lap. I had grown since August and it was a little awkward to find a comfortable position, but I wanted to be with him. I wanted to be the window between the two of you, to somehow explain to him what I knew about you and to help him reach a place inside that would tell him how to approach you. I also wanted to remind him that I was there too, I wanted us to be a family.

“Because she can’t hear well from behind,” I said, “It’s a good idea to go around, so she can see you coming. She probably won’t look up, but that way she won’t be startled.” Bill nodded and kept rocking, holding me to him but focusing on you, like an athlete with his eye on the prize.

“I’m glad you’re here, Bill. I really missed you,” I said. I lifted myself away from him and sat on the floor beside the rocker. I remember looking at your hunched back, so still – I don’t think that you had moved a muscle, except for your fingers, since we came in.

Bill got up and made his way around the perimeter of the room, keeping his eyes on you. He lowered himself slowly to the floor, laying his body to its full length a few feet in front of you. He stretched out his left hand with its palm turned up just beside your knee, not touching you, just letting it rest there. He lay his cheek on his right hand and stayed still and watchful for a long time, until his fingers started to move, slowly, hardly noticeable in their dance. He lay there offering you the touch of his hand.

I was mesmerized by this tiny movement, this gentlest of invitations. And finally, without looking up, without changing your posture in any other way, you reached out and put your fingers on Bill’s hand, fingertips touching, resting, connecting. I held my breath. Bill had tears in his eyes but he didn’t brush them away for fear of breaking the moment and startling the curious, little animal in you that was reaching out. I wondered how long you would leave your fingers there. After a few seconds, you pulled them back and returned your hand to the tin in your lap. Bill turned his face onto his hand to wipe his eyes, then slowly drew back his left hand to reach for a hankie in the pocket of his jeans. He got to his knees and approached you – he put his hands under your arms and gently picked you up, always careful not to crowd your face with his hug, he wrapped his arms around you and rubbed your back.

We had a wonderful time, that Christmas. I think it was good for all of us that we weren’t in Vancouver for this time together. I don’t know that Bill would have been able to relax if we had been at home, the way he did at Sophie’s. I remember one evening when he took Sophie’s car and went out by himself. When he came back, he spent a long time working alone in the garage. I remember thinking how strange it was to hear noises coming from below me …then I drifted to sleep.

The next day we went out to get a Christmas tree. Sophie said that it had to be a Scotch pine. She explained that the farm where her grandparents had lived had many Scotch pines and each Christmas her grandmother insisted on choosing the fullest one herself.

Sophie bought some tree lights; she had never had a tree before so we were starting from scratch. We made cookie ornaments (most of which were eaten by you and Boots), popcorn garlands, origami birds and tiny paper snowflakes cut with nail scissors. It was a beautiful tree.

I never knew how to ask Bill about mom, and strangely he never offered any information. It was like she wasn’t part of the equation for that segment of our lives – I hardly noticed the absence.

Many years later when I left British Columbia for the second time, to come to Ontario to go to university, I spent the first few days with Sophie. I was at a self righteous age at that time, seeking to nurse my anger towards mom. I asked Sophie if she knew what had happened to mom after we had left her at the collective; I wanted to know the details of our abandonment to fan the flames of my fury. She explained what Bill had told her.

He had returned daily to the collective in the first weeks after we left, but each time he would show up, Ariel would meet him at the door. He would try to explain that he just wanted to know if she was all right, to see when she would be able to come home. He told Sophie that he would hear mom screaming at him from another part of the house, hurling attacks and accusations at him. Mom had convinced herself, and those around her, that his presence threatened her and she lashed out while her protecting angel, Ariel, stood guard at the door, barring his way. After a few weeks Ariel decided that it would be best for mom to get away from him completely, so they left Vancouver. Bill tried to contact her through the other collective members but no one would tell him where they’d gone.

During his visit with us at Sophie’s, he saw that we were doing well. He hadn’t pictured us growing up with all the middle class trimmings: matching clothes, shopping malls and Cocoa Puffs. But our suburbanization seemed to him a small price to pay for stability. Bill and Sophie decided that we would stay with her until the summer, and then they would look at the situation again.

Christmas day had never been a big deal to us before, but this year it was all so new, exciting and special. When we woke up, I took you by the hand and we went downstairs. Boots came to greet us still wearing the red velvet bow that Sophie had put on him for Christmas Eve — he had worn it all night while he slept. The curtains were still drawn in the living room and the warmth of the tree lights shimmered in the dim. Bill was there by himself when we walked into the kitchen, his face beaming in the light of the candles that were everywhere around the room. The table was laid out with fruit, nuts and muffins warm from the oven. There was cheese and smoked salmon that Bill had brought from home, cream cheese, marmalade and tiny tarts with jam – it reminded me of the table of delights that magically appears in my favourite book, The Little Princess. We stood in the doorway and Bill watched my eyes feasting on his wonderful surprise. I hugged him and ran upstairs to get Sophie out of bed. When she walked into the kitchen, she stopped and stood as silent as I had, her hands to her lips taking it all in. “Thank you,” Bill said from behind his breakfast offering. Sophie crossed the room and hugged him, raising her head to kiss him on the cheek.

We ate and listened to Christmas music and were like what I imagined any other family would be like on Christmas morning. When we finished in the kitchen we went to open our gifts. Sophie had helped us pick out a sweater for Bill and she had bought us some beautiful outfits. There was a heavy square box that Sophie handed to me, explaining that it was a present from mom, to you and me. When I opened the box I found a snow globe – a small forest scene inside with two old fashioned skaters on the little mirror pond. It was very heavy when I turned it over to make the snow swirl around them. Sophie showed me the key underneath to wind it up so we could hear the music. She explained that it had belonged to mom but that she didn’t bring it with her when she had left home. Sophie later told me that their grandmother had given it to Sarah and when it had been left behind, Sophie had hidden it so that the old woman would think that mom had taken it with her.

I haven’t thought of that snow globe for a long time. I know that Sophie meant well, but now that it comes back to me, I remember being so resentful that mom was as callous about abandoning her grandparents who had loved her, as she was about abandoning us. I remember defiance warming me as I sat on Sophie’s living room rug that Christmas morning with this gift – so cherished by a gentle old lady, so inconsequential to our mom.

Sophie helped you unwrap a terrific toy of different shaped blocks that each fit into their appropriate holes on a large plastic globe. It was the perfect gift for you: bright colours, soft plastic and so many planes and corners for your hands to explore.

I hadn’t noticed that Bill had left the room until I heard some noise coming from the doorway to the garage. Bill called us in to show us his other surprise: a beautiful 10 speed bicycle for me and a tricycle for you. He beamed as he wheeled them towards us and said: “Go on, give’em a spin.” I realized that he had moved Sophie’s car out of the garage and they had rearranged the other stuff to give us a riding area. I hugged Bill with all the love that any kid’s heart on a Christmas morning can hold. What he didn’t know though was that when I was thanking him for the bike, I was also thanking him for being there, for not abandoning us, yet for letting us stay with Sophie. The snow was three feet deep for this, our first Christmas in the east, but we were flying into spring: the bike was my hope that if we were to be here until spring, then all would be well.

We had Sophie’s famous pineapple ham and scalloped potatoes with baby carrots for Christmas dinner and for dessert, she had bought a jelly roll cake, decorated to look like a log with sprigs of plastic holly and a little plastic sign saying “Season’s Greetings.” I remember all these things so well.

As I relay this story of that Christmas with Bill and Sophie, I try to think of why I have such a warm feeling about it, why it has stayed with me in such detail all these years as the defining example of what happiness means to me. I still can’t explain it but I think that it had something to do with the peaceful, neutral environment that we found in Sophie’s house that allowed us to pretend that we were like any other happy family. But on a deeper level, I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with what came later on in the day, something about knowing. Most adults feel that it’s important to keep secrets about difficult things from children, but secrets are dangerous, they allow you to imagine the worst. That Christmas opened a lot of doors to the secrets that had bothered me for a long time.

Later that night when Sophie came to tuck me in and say goodnight, I had put the snow globe beside the ceramic pitcher on the table between our beds. I asked Sophie why mom left home and had left all of her things behind. She looked at me for a while then, trusting that I needed to know, explained about mom and how she had not been well even when she was a teenager. She had been a beautiful and happy child, but as she got older she went through some really bad times, like the depression that had happened to her after you were sick. Sophie explained that when she was like this mom’s pain was so great that she had no way of seeing the pain that she was causing anyone else. It was a good way of explaining it to me; it helped me to understand and believe that it was not just me that mom was angry with, but that there were others who have suffered tremendously by being too close to her. I remember looking at the snow globe on the bedside table in the light of the street lamp and thinking of the hands that had held it lovingly over the years: in my frustration and confusion with mom, the snow globe became a symbol for me of this fellowship of people who had loved and been hurt by Sarah Burchill.

The other thing that the snow globe did for me is that it gave me an excuse to pry more information about our great grandparents. Sophie had loved them both very much and in sharing the globe and its story, painful and honest as it was, she opened the door to other questions and stories about them. Sarah and Sophie spent each of their childhood summers on their grandparents’ farm. Their father was on the road a lot and Sophie has never wanted to talk about their mother, so it sounded as if most of their happy memories came from those summers on the farm.

I loved hearing about the farm, about the rejected lambs that “Granny” (as she liked to be called) would put in a burlap sack for a while with a lamb from another ewe, to fool the woolly mother into thinking she had dropped more than one baby. I loved to hear of the kittens that roamed freely in the barn and would always come to greet the girls as they arrived to do their chores. I would imagine myself in their apple tree with all of its newly formed fruit, looking out over the fields as “Gramps” mowed and bailed the hay with the hired hands. On any desolate January day, I can almost make myself smell the clover and apple pie steam, carried on a soft breeze to the tire swing in their front yard. I realize now that the telling of these stories of her life with her grandparents’ was as important to Sophie as these letters to you are essential to me. Those stories were like the gift of hugs that she had received from her grandparents and was now passing onto me. They opened up windows and doors in me that I didn’t know existed, so caked had they become with the grime of confusion and self-denial. Sophie, through her little girl’s eyes, was able to let me see myself and where I’d come from; she let me know that it was good – that I was good.

There are two things that have stayed with me about the rest of the winter that we spent with Sophie. First of all, she signed us up for swimming lessons that winter. I went by myself of course, but she enrolled with you in a “Mom and Tot” class. You were the oldest of the children and I don’t know what made her think that this would be good for you but it was. She was always challenging herself, and you, to see how much of our world you were willing to accept. The swimming lessons turned out to be a great idea.

Most days at home or at Molly’s, you would sit alone, moving as little as possible until someone took your hand to lead you somewhere else where you would sit again, silent and still. In the pool however, it was a very different story. Perhaps it was the sensation of water against your skin, perhaps it was the lightness of your body as Sophie would bounce with you in her arms – whatever it was, you would relax in the water despite the squeals or cries from the other children. You would splash and kick awkwardly using muscles that seldom knew exercise; you were like a flower opening in the water. I remember watching the two of you through the Plexiglas window of the spectators’ gallery, wishing that Sophie were our real mother and wondering, with just the tiniest hint of guilt, why life had not made it so.

Later on that winter, it must have been in February or March, we went to the Metro Zoo. I had been to the zoo in Stanley Park but this winter setting and the expanses of forest in which the animals lived made it a whole different experience. I rode on the hairiest camel in existence (or was it a dromedary?) and Sophie would gently turn your head so you could watch me go around the track, laid out with hay bailes, on my exotic mount. Later on I pushed you in your stroller up the winding path through the woods to the tigers. We spent a long time watching them pacing in their corner of the bush; continents between our native lands yet a finger’s breadth of interlock fence between my hands and their dense, pulsating fur. They reminded me so much of you, aware of our presence, yet so focused on their own intention that they would choose not to acknowledge us.

In one of the pavilions we saw a large enclosure with a grouping of orang-utans, their copper hair almost the same colour as yours. The Plexiglas wall allowed the animals to come right up and inspect us as we observed them. Sophie was standing behind you and propped you along the clear wall, inches from the animals. She put your hand on the glass at their eye level. The orang-utan nearest the wall turned and stroked his fingers over the place on the glass where your face was. He let his fingers linger on the glass before you for a few seconds, while he looked around his enclosure. When he broke contact to rejoin a group by the pond, you turned away from the glass and ran your fingers over your own face where he had laid his hand. It was something that I had never seen you do and it showed an awareness that we seldom saw from you. Were you imitating him, showing us what he had done? Were you confused that you could feel the tracks of your fingers on your eyelids, unlike his phantom touch?

I realize now how much you taught me about patience, stillness, listening with all the senses. Even as an eleven year old, I would observe you – like Jane Goodall with her chimps: I believed that if I could somehow understand the mysteries that you kept so sacred, I could understand the universe. So many hours that we spent together Claire, you and I – just inches, yet galaxies apart.

I miss you very much,
Happy Christmas. Love,
Starla



Copyright 2003