Father Christmas

y Claire Mackay

Family is not an important thing, it's everything.

~Michael J. Fox

A few years ago, I had to go out of town, and I was rummaging through our third-floor closets in search of my garment bag. In mid-rummage, I found an old cassette tape. When I picked it up it straggled from its tiny reel and lay in my hand like a clump of seaweed, brown and discouraged. The label read "XMAS 1968."

When the kids were little, we moved a lot, often many thousands of miles away from my parents, their grandparents. To banish those miles we sent tapes back and forth. "XMAS 1968" was one of them.

Suddenly hungry for history, I rewound it carefully, found an old tape player, and pushed play. Age had taken its toll; it hissed and moaned and squealed and crackled, my mother sounding now like a weary cello or a tipsy squirrel. Then all at once, after a moment of slow silence, I heard my father's voice, warm and true and real as a wound.

"Merry Christmas," my father said. "I wish I could be with you."

When I was small and I heard people say "Father Christmas," I thought they were talking about my dad. The two words just automatically went together. Each fulfilled, enhanced, and defined the other.

Father. Christmas. A permanent pair, yoked forever in my mind. Like movies and red liquorice. Father. Christmas.

In a way, this is surprising, for my father sprang from grave and frugal Scottish folk who viewed merriment as a crime against nature, tidings of comfort and joy with suspicion, and Christmas as something to be endured, like quinsy or sex or dry rot. Fortunately, he had married my mother, whose family was a little Irish, fond of laughter and theatrical generosity. He turned into a Christmas nut and just like the redeemed post-ghost Scrooge, he knew how to keep Christmas well.

In the good years the bounty was prodigal. I remember a doll's house whose small perfections enslaved me; a microscope, whose revelations introduced me to awe; a string of real pearls, which I still own and wear often, all the while thinking of my father; and books, and books, and books, always books.

In the bad years we still had a Christmas. I will never know to what lengths he sometimes went to in order to ensure we woke up to a gaudy tree, magnificently misshapen stockings, and that one gift — wrapped in red tissue paper with meticulous corners, the string as secure as his hand — we'd never known we wanted until we opened it. I do know he pawned all things pawnable, juggled debts like a vaudevillian, and sacrificed much — including, more than once, his pride — to give us Christmas.

Even in the worst years, and there were a few, he always found a special gift for my mother. A golden locket with a stone so throbbingly blue it seemed alive; kid gloves softer than air: a sterling silver compact engraved with her initials; silks and satins and midnight lace, just a little scandalous, to tell her again of his fierce and faithful love, while she murmured, "You shouldn't have," her face rosy with secrets.

But most of my father's gifts weren't wrapped up in tissue paper, nor were they found under the tree. Most of them are still around. When I look into myself I find his gift with words, the wit and the wonder of them, the way and the play of them. In me I find his joy and grief, his laughter, his scrupulosity, his knack for solitude, his continuing compassionate astonishment at his fellow humans, his reverence. And if I am at all wise or brave, if I am at all loving, it is because I looked at him and learned to be. I look at my sons and I see other gifts: his agility of mind and arduous curiosity are in one; his drive, his will and his steadfastness are in another; and his winsome buoyant innocence in the third.

My father spent his last Christmas in the hospital. We saw him on Christmas Eve, touched his hand, his cheek, kissed him. The surgery, against all odds, had gone well, and the doctors marvelled at his strength, shook unbelieving heads over his stubborn heart, smilingly promised a return home. Soon. It was a splendid gift for us, his strength, their promise. A week later, on New Year's Day, the great tunnels of his blood gave way, and in a minute he was suddenly shockingly, absurdly dead. The stubborn heart, that had loved us — me — so well, stopped.

My father gave us all he could for all of his years, and I wonder sometimes whether I ever said a proper thank you to him. Sometimes, when I am fanciful, I find myself hoping that what I have done with my life is a kind of thank you. And sometimes I even think my father hears it.

"I wish I could be with you," my dad said.

You are, Dad. You are. Always.

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