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 eavestrough 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 through 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 present was under the
tree for me. 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.
The memory of that unbreakable spirit is the
best Christmas gift that I receive every year.
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