Fresh-fallen snow protested
beneath the crush of my gumboots breaking trail down the unploughed lane. Dry,
sharp squeaks, not unlike the cries of cheap chalk cruelly scrapped against too
clean a blackboard.
Skuur-eek, skuur-eek.
The boots ignored the sounds.
They moved on, ribbed rubber bottoms and laced high leather tops creating a
meandering wake in the ankle deep snow. From each side of the trail, drifted
snow leaned tiredly against the backsides of the bungalows, dropped there to
rest by an impatient blizzard just passed through. Their crests were
indistinguishable against the white stucco walls but nearly reached tufted
piles of fluffy snow clinging nervously to windowsills and eaves trough lips.
The squeaks flew through the
still night air, dodging fat flakes that fell heavy and straight onto my cap
bill, but occasionally splashing into my face flushed warm from the walk. I
could have rode back home from Christmas Eve Mass with the family, but the
teenage mind always prefers independence, and it was a chance to visit friends
along the way.
Faint strains of music joined
the squeaking as I approached our back fence. I stopped to hear the music more
clearly, now identifiable as singing voices escaping through an open window. I
shuffled forward and listened to the notes float out crisply and clearly, then
mingle with smoke rising from the chimneys. Notes and smoke rose together into an icy sky
illuminated by frost crystals set shimmering by thousands of stars and the
frosty moon the Ojibwe called Minidoo Geezis, the little spirit moon
that appears small and cold early in winter.
I held my breath to hear better
and determined that the music was “O Holy Night,” and the notes came from the
window in my grandmother’s room. It was open to the cold because most people
smoked cigarettes back then and at gatherings cracked a window to thin the
smoke. They sang the first verse, and, when they reached the sixth line, the
other voices ceased and one voice carried on alone:
“Fall on your knees! Oh, hear
the angel voices! O Niiii ... iiight Diii...vine! ...” That’s the part where
the notes rise higher and higher until the singer reaches an awesome note.
The solo voice belonged to my
grandmother, and I knew she was hitting that high note while sitting on the
edge of the bed that crippling rheumatoid arthritis had made her prison for
sixteen years. She was unable to walk without assistance and had trouble
holding a cigarette between her gnarled fingers.
The others had stopped singing
to listen to her. The second time she hit the high notes at the words “O Night
Divine,” a shiver danced on my spine.
When she finished singing “O Holy Night,” the other voices started up
again, this time with “Silent Night” and other favourite carols. I went into
the house and found Christmas Eve celebrants — my mom, dad, and some neighbours
— crowded into the ten-by-ten bedroom that was my grandmother’s world. They
sang long into the night, mostly in French because the neighbours were the
Gauthiers who seldom spoke English to my grandmother and my mother.
After the singing ended my
mother served tourtière, which I slathered with mustard. Then we gathered at
the tree and opened our gifts. I have long forgotten what I got, and it doesn’t
matter, because my real gift came many years later: the gift of realization
that those high notes were not solely the products of the lungs. They were
driven by something stronger than flesh — an unbreakable spirit. They came from
strength far beyond anything that a mere body can produce.
(This column was adapted from my book Waking Nanabijou: Uncovering a Secret Past
– Dundurn Group 2007)
