Christmas Story 2019: Walking with Magi by Dan de Souza

  Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the most wise. Everywhere they are the wise ones. They are the magi.

The Gift of the Magi- O. Henry

His name began to disappear around Thanksgiving.  He knew by Valentine's Day, it would be gone; lost like the sun in November, leaving only a grey mourning.   

She had forgotten how to use the oven just before Thanksgiving too and  rather than face the anxiety growing from that confusion, he thought it best that he cook the turkey for Christmas dinner.  At Thanksgiving she had been able to help, sitting at the table in their small kitchen and giving him directions around oven temperature and time and doneness.  That was when she began to call him Tom. Their friends called him Tom. Neighbours called him Tom, old work buddies but she, she had always called him Thomas;  “My Thomas”.  

Her apron hangs around his neck, the hem landing just below his belt.  He stares at her back as she stares at the Christmas tree. She use to be so happy getting the tree; all three kids in the car, the dog bouncing from back seat to front.

“You need to get the turkey in the oven.  The kids will be here at five and we need to have the turkey out by then so they can put the casseroles in the oven.  We will need the space in the oven.” He turns and heads back into the kitchen. Bends over and peers into the oven, the turkey is turning brown, not quite golden yet, more like the pale brown of his work boots.  He rubs his chin, feeling the bristles on his palm and his calloused hand on his chin. “She’s in there Del. Don’t worry, I’m on it”.

“Who?”  Della looks at him over the back of her chair, her hands in her lap, pulling at her fingers, her ankles crossed. “What are you talking about…?  What are you…?” She searches for words. After sixty years, he can tell by the shape of her mouth, the slight movement of her lips that she has lost what she is thinking, misplacing her thoughts in the jumble that use to be as ordered and as neat as her pantry. "The turkey, Del." He wants to find them for her, wants the moments over all those years where she knew him like... “The turkey Della.  The turkey is in the oven.  I just called her “she” you know.  Like the way I called my trucks “she” right?  Remember, when old Thomas here, called his trucks “she”?

“Yes.  Thomas.  Yes. I remember.  You better get the turkey in the oven.  The kids will be here at five and we need to have the turkey out by then so they can put the casseroles in…”  Her voice trails off and she looks at her hands in her lap pulling at her ring finger. Her bottom lip disappears, sucked under by her teeth.

Thomas turns and goes back into the kitchen, opens a cupboard and stares.  Rubs his chin again, tucks it into the collar of his plaid shirt. “No kids this year Della.” he says to himself, rummaging for gravy mix.  “No kids this year, Del. None at Thanksgiving. None at Labour Day. Can’t remember the last time.  

“The turkey will be done in time for the kids”  he yells out of the kitchen over his shoulder.

“That’s good…”  

“It’s Thomas.  Thomas.” he mumbles, as he looks into the oven for the third time.

He sets the table, placing four settings around the oval, candles in the centre.  Della stares at her hands in her lap, glances up as he places a setting of wedding silverware in front of her. She pulls at her ring finger again, twisting the knuckle.  She looks up as he places a plate in front of her, picks up the fork and runs her thumb along the tines.  “Turn on the lights..ah. Turn on the lights.” Thomas finishes with the table and moves over to turn on the lights.  He has them on a timer, set to go on at dusk but she has been wanting them on earlier and earlier. 

The timer rings in the kitchen, the turkey is finally ready.

After dinner, he clears the plates and Della stays at the table twisting her fingers, blinking at the Christmas lights.  Thomas rinses the dirty dishes and places the two clean ones back in the cupboard. He catches his reflection in the window above the sink. His sleeves are rolled up.  He has bags under his eyes and even in the night reflection he can see that his skin is a tired grey. He stares for a long time and then drops his head, chin to chest.  It’s then that he sees her ring. Her engagement ring, the one he gave her all those years ago, sitting on a saucer beside the hand soap.  “She lost it so many times.  I had to take it” he says to himself as he begins to scrub the roasting pan.

With the kitchen clean, Thomas turns off the light and heads back into the living room. Her back is to him, facing the Christmas tree, her shoulders are thinner, her head hangs below them and he can see them tremble slightly.   

He turns quickly, moving back to the kitchen, back to the sink and places his hands on the counter. He straightens his arms, locking his elbows.  Finally, after a long time, he lifts his head, seeing his grey reflection in the window, he gives one slight, sharp nod and rolls down first one sleeve and than the other of his plaid shirt.

“Wasn’t that fun?” he says, entering the living room.  “Wasn’t it great to see the kids again?” He claps his hands together and wrings them together.  Della looks up. She lets go of her fingers. “I mean, it’s a shame they had to leave so early but it was so good to see them.  David seems very happy with the new job. Don’t you think?” Thomas stops to see if she will join him on this new path. Will she go with him? He looks at her.  She is staring at the Christmas lights outside the window. “Don’t you think Della? Wasn’t it good to see them?”

Della turns towards him.  Pushes her chair away from the table, smoothing the front of her skirt as she stands.  “Yes. Yes it was great fun. David seems very happy.” The dimple that has been there for all of the sixty years arrives with her smile. “It really was wonderful, …”

“And can you believe how well Karen is doing?  That new apartment of hers sounds really nice. We will have to go and visit her, don’t you think?”  He looks sideways at Della, peering out under shaggy, white brows. “Don’t you think?”

“Yes.  Yes, that would be nice.  I’d love to see it? Where is it?”

“Oh, you know now.  Come on. She’s been in Toronto for the past year and a half.  Remember?”

“Yes.  Yes. Of course.  Toronto. Of course.  I’d love to see it. It was very nice seeing her tonight, right?  Tonight?”

“Fantastic.  Really good. Hey Della, since the kids had to leave so early, what do you say we open presents now.  Tonight. Ok? Remember our first year together how we opened our presents Christmas Eve? Remember, we had tea and laughed?” A small crease appears on Della’s brow and then slowly, the corners of her mouth turn upward.  

“We did?  We did that?”  She looks sideways at Thomas.  The way she looked at him when he knew she was about to join him in some mischief. She reaches out and touches an ornament hanging from the tree.  “Happy Christmas Mom” written in glitter glued on years ago. “Funny I can’t remember what we do?”  

“We did.  We opened them that way our first Christmas.  Let’s open presents before we go to bed. That way we can sleep in. Ok?”

Her fingers are still touching the ornament.  It is rough to her touch. She pushes back her long brown hair, flecked with grey and leaves glitter on her cheek.   “Who? Who?” Della says.  

“John made it.  I think it was in grade 1.  He may have used a little too much glitter, don’t you think?”  Thomas sees her profile, the glitter on her cheek. The corner of her mouth turns up.  She gives a slight nod, turning her face towards him. “Let’s open presents.”

They sit facing each other;  the tree between them. Thomas begins by opening his presents.  He opens the shirt and the socks he bought. Opens the stocking that he has filled with chocolate and an ice scraper and at the bottom, the cigars that she would never buy, leaving them unseen in the bottom of the stocking.  “Thank you Della. You got my favourite stuff. Thank you. Your turn” he says to Del, again seeing her profile, that beautiful mouth. “Open your presents.”

Della peels the paper from parcels wrapped by hands unaccustomed to tape and ribbon. New gloves, a box of Turtles, a sweater.  She smiles after each but only looks at the tree. “Thank you. These are lovely. “ And then stares into her lap, wrapping paper by her slippers.   

“I have one more gift for you Della.”  Thomas rises, crosses to her and kneels at her feet.  He reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and pulls out her ring.  He holds it between his index finger and his thumb, holds it up to her eyes, raises her chin up from her lap.  “It’s for you Della. Thank you for such a wonderful Christmas and thank you for such a beautiful family.”

Della looks at Thomas, trying to decide if she should continue on his journey.   Her eyes focus on his fingers, picking up the light in the diamond she has worn all those years, its band thinned by years of dishes and diapers, hospitals and schools, pain and loss.  She holds out her ring finger and he slips it on, twisting it slowly so it can slide over her swollen knuckle, to rest in the groove that has been its home for over sixty years.

“It’s beautiful.  I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

Pretty pleased with this:

First Person most read columns 2019. The Globe and Mail

Sent from my Samsun

Different Sausage, Same Casing

Doug Ford is no Mike Harris.  There are similarities of course.  Both dislike public education and public services of all types. Both wear a suit the way a sausage wears a casing.  Both believe that there is no answer too simple for a complex question. Both believe that the world is a better place from inside a van, preferably one with a big screen TV,  protected by the OPP.     With that said, people should take comfort that Ford is not Harris.

Harris built his party in a painstaking manner, moving from one church basement to the next legion hall across Ontario, consolidating power.  As a result, Harris had a cabinet and caucus that was beholden to him.  While Harris had future sexual harassers and former garbage collectors for caucus members at least they were his sexual harassers and his garbage collectors. 

Ford is a snake oil salesmen (with all due respect to the snake oil industry) who took over a fractured party through slander and trickery, taking advantage of a sex scandal involving that beige suit of a man, Patrick Brown.  The contrast to Harris here is important.   Harris owned his party.  Ford stole his.  Harris never feared about loyalty; after all, his Tories would always dance with the one who brought them.  But Doug, Doug cannot trust his gang.  Can there be any better proof of this than Doug forcing his stolen seals to clap on cue? He is a man so insecure that he sees a threat in Randy Hillier, a man whose greatest claim to fame is pulling his own tractor.

Ford is largely hated by his caucus; they look at him the way you look at your Uncle when he shows up unannounced.  They support him in a Joe Pesce  Good Fellas way; twitchy, very twitchy.  Ford won the leadership on the strength of people who think the cancerous rays of wind turbines can seep through their tinfoil hats.  He won because he courted the vote of devout home schooled virgins.  Not that being a devout home schooled virgin is a bad thing, but it just might not qualify you to be the next Minister of Education once this barely educated one is fired.

Harris earned his reputation as a person any amount of money could buy.  Harris was not born to the manor of corruption, unlike Ford, he worked for his entrance into that big house.   Whether it was selling the 407 for a current trip between Hamilton and Oakville or being Frank Stronach's personal chute greaser, Harris worked hard to feather his own nest and ensure that he and his friends and family would be the most alright of all the Jacks.  Ford had that type of largesse bestowed upon him.  After being born on third base, Doug doesn't have the interest to run for home.  He's in it for the revenge, not the ideology.

Unlike Harris, Doug has made mistakes early in his first big war with teachers.  Where Harris was calculating, Dougie lets personal feelings interfere.  His battle against the parents of autistic children is a revenge hit.  Harris never attacked a student, preferring to portray them as perpetual victims, no less insulting than Ford's approach but much more effective. Harris softened the ground for months with a marching barrage of commercials and rallied his base to go after the very people who helped raise their kids. Ford stumbled into the first battle in this round by taking student cell phones away.

There is hope here for teachers, students, in fact all citizens. Ford is no Harris.   Ford is a hit and run con and makes for a much easier opponent.  All we have to do is hold our ground and wait for the wheels to inevitably fall off his fat ass van.

Eulogy of Geoff Sharron

What If?

I can imagine you taking some pleasure in seeing a former English teacher at the front of a large room, a large crowd, and at a loss for words.  There are of course no words because our language is a poor instrument to capture the grief and sorrow and heartache we all feel.

So perhaps you will indulge me for a moment, allowing me to go back to literature and I hope Teresa will forgive me for bringing Ernest Hemingway into this.  

I don’t suppose many of you have read “Big Two Hearted River” by Hemingway.  But that is of no importance, after all I spent 30 years speaking to people who had not done the required reading so this will only be uncomfortable for you.  As a matter of fact, as I look out over this gathering today many of you are the very people who did not do the reading back then.

Set in the aftermath of world war one, our protagonist, Nick, arrives on a burnt out area north of lake Superior.  Nick has been dropped by the train in the middle of what was the small mill town of Seney.  There is nothing left of Seney except ash, the river and grasshoppers.  

I think of this story now because Nick takes simple pleasure in simple, beautiful things.  In many ways Nick and Geoffrey are kindred spirits.

Nick is in a harsh and barren place but stares wondrously at the trout nosing the river bottom, holding themselves in place in the current.  He thinks back to a time a good friend taught him to make coffee over a fire and he experiences joy as he wades into the cold stream and feels his pants stick to his legs.  He is happy.  He is at peace.

I start with literature because it is a place where we can talk of everything and nothing all at the same time.  I hope you get a chance to read that story in the next few weeks.

I know that you have stared at the ceiling these past 10 days.  You have tossed and turned, faced the wall and then back again.  You have woken just before the time you normally do, only to remember the pain of it all.  In those times, you have probably been asking the same question.  The same big question that I have been asking.  That Bruce and Teresa and Thomas and James have been asking.  

What if?

Geoffrey asked of me on Christmas Eve. What if.  He looked down on me, not metaphorically mind you but literally, he had to looked down on me since he was 10 I believe and said, “Dan, what if” his big voice and that barely contained laugh following “Dan, what if Kyle Dubas the young  general manager of our beloved Maple Leafs, spent his brilliance on solving world hunger rather than on managing a hockey team?  

What if indeed? 

What if Geoff had not taken that last run?  What if he took the route his good friend Daniel took.  If you’re asking those questions than why not follow your logic to its natural conclusions.  Ask all the what ifs.  

What if Geoff had not had such a beautiful and caring family, a father who took him on a canoe trip when he was five.  A mother, brave and strong enough to let her son go West and make his way.  What if they had not done that?  Then his friend couldn’t write:

Geoff is everything one can ask for in a friend.  He showed and taught me so much, and my life is richer from his friendship.

What if Geoff hadn’t paddled with his two brothers, camped with them, honed his great skills on the mountain with them?  If he hadn’t done these things, you would not be able to write on his Facebook wall 

Geoff was a very kind person, who always made the people around him feel happy and safe. His memory will never cease to put a smile on my face. 

Do you see where our question has lead us? 

Teresa let him go; her magical son.  Challenged him intellectually every step of the way.  Bruce, in his quiet and calm way, taught him to become the young man we all wish was here today.  James, jousting with his older brother, nudging him.  Looking up to him.  Thomas, quiet Thomas, picking up Geoff’s guitar.  Skiing on Geoff’s tips, pushing him to be better.   

Maybe we would not be in such pain today if we hadn’t gone on those countless canoe trips and epic ski trips.  Maybe all those discussion around great food and bad cards lead us here.  

Maybe if we hadn’t blurred the line, till it no longer existed between friends and family, we wouldn’t be here now.  

Maybe Geoff could have grown up to be meek and mild.  Bland and boring.  A man unwilling to take a risk.  But we didn’t do that, did we?  Geoff didn’t become that.

Geoff became a man of substance.  A thoughtful, kind, gentle, caring compassionate, passionate, talented man.  A loyal friend.  A big brother  to James and Thomas and dare I say it, to our Kevin and Claire.  He became the man that we all loved.

But these questions sting me like nettles.   What if he skied in the centre of the run?  What if he didn’t push edges?  What if he had taken the typical road, the one well travelled?  

Well, he wouldn’t have been our Geoff, our love, would he?

I use to text Geoff during Leaf games and I started this when he moved out West and the Leafs were so bad.  I texted a lot of people back then during games and you know Geoff was the only one to text me back.  “Ya” he’d write “we suck Dan.”  It was like we were watching the game together, even though we were separated by thousands of kilometers. What if he hadn’t answered me?  What if I hadn’t texted him in the first place?  Well I wouldn’t have the joy of that memory and his presence right now.   

But I am tired of these questions now.  I am sure you are too.  What you want is answers.  What I want is an answer.  Of course the answers I have are flawed and do not pass the careful scrutiny of the reasonable mind.  

What has come to me is Frankle’s idea that you and I have assumed this burden of grief.  We have taken it on like a heavy pack; much like the one Nick in Hemingway's tale lifts and strides to his beautiful river.

There is meaning in it.  We take on burden, because Geoff chose to live his life in a deliberate and wondrous way, just like Nick in the story.   By assuming this heavy burden, you allowed that wondrous, beautiful man, our Geoffrey, to live his life that deliberate and unique way.  There is meaning and beauty in that if we can just find the strength to see it.

Let’s flip the “what if’s” on their heads.  Come with me for a moment.

What if you are standing on top of a beautiful mountain, staring at a daunting run, your heart pounding, what if you just think of Geoff for a moment.  What if you talk to him a little bit; “hey Geoff, I’m going for it.”  Or what if you follow the swirl your paddle makes as you push for home and in that moment you see Geoff in the reflection of the water.  Or what if, after a great day on the river or the lake, when you are sitting around the fire with your friends, your family, you just look into that fire and give a little nod to Geoff. He will nod back.

What if, when you hear someone pick up a guitar and strum some chords, you think of Geoff in the notes.  

What if you do these things, some of these things, all of these things in your own way.  You would not be much different from Hemingway’s Nick or much different from our beautiful Geoff.  You would see the beauty in simple, peaceful things.  But more importantly, you may be closer to Geoff than you ever have been before.  He would be right there with you.

If we take on this burden, he will not be gone and we will not be alone.