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Stocking-stuffer stories

Like sitting around the simulated glow of the fireplace channel, there's something warm and comforting about sharing stories during the holiday season.
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Like sitting around the simulated glow of the fireplace channel, there's something warm and comforting about sharing stories during the holiday season.

The holidays are all about gathering, after all, and whenever friends and loved ones get together for a little festive cheer, the tall tales are never far behind.

It's why Pique has been sharing the stories of local writers at Christmastime for many moons now. In a town where family is often miles away and the locals are more attuned to the distinct needs of visitors than their own, it's important that we hold on to the traditions that make this time of year so special—and for our makeshift Pique family, storytelling is one of our favourite pasttimes.

So, however you celebrate the holidays, we hope you enjoy the following tales from four talented local scribes, and, more importantly, hope you get to spend some quality time with your own uniquely Whistler family—whatever that looks like.

-Brandon Barrett

Illustrations by Claire Ryan

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Going Home For Christmas

By Angie Nolan

On Dec. 24, 1979, the prognosis on the children's ward at Silver Banks Hospital (SBH) would have been that Christmas was on steroids. Doctors, nurses, desk clerks, cleaning staff were all decorated in festive attire—Santa hats, ugly sweaters, tinsel necklaces, jingling bells and anything that glimmered in hope. It was Christmas Eve after all, and the overriding wish of every child on the ward was to be able to go home for Christmas. Some would get their wish. Some would not.

Little Josephine Pyne still wasn't sure if she would be lucky enough to wake up at home on Christmas Day or not. She had been feeling so much better lately. Josephine, or Jojo as most would call her, hadn't been too hot or too cold in a few days. The blankets didn't stick to her body anymore, like the cotton baton on the construction paper cards her Grade 4 classmates had made for her. Jojo's fever blisters were almost all gone and she was able to eat macaroni and cheese again. She told her favourite nurse, Nurse Kelly, that one of her Christmas wishes was to never eat soup again. Well, Nurse Kelly must be magic, because for breakfast the next morning she brought Jojo a bowl full of warm mac and cheese with extra cheese on it!

"Merry Christmas, sweet Jojo," said Nurse Kelly. "I hope all your Christmas wishes come true."

"Do you think I'll get to go home?" asked Jojo.

"There's a good chance you might if your appetite keeps up and the fever stays away today," Nurse Kelly reassured her.

"Home?" spoke a weary voice from across the room.

Nurse Kelly walked over to the bed and opened the curtain. "Well hello, sleepyhead!" she said. "Would you like some breakfast?"

"No," replied the weak voice.

Nurse Kelly gently buzzed around a girl in the bed. She was 13-year-old Tessa Dawn, who had been at Silver Banks for an entire eight months. Six and a half months longer than Jojo.

Some days, Tessa Dawn would be bright and cheery, shuffling through the ward telling Jojo and the other kids silly jokes or stories of her exciting trips to Hawaii and Disneyland.

Some days, she wouldn't get out of bed at all.

On the good days, Tessa would also strut around with a brand new device called a Sony Walkman. Some kind stranger had given it to her because they felt bad she had to be in the hospital for so long. It was like a mini-stereo that she could play cassette tapes on. Her favorite singer was Billy Joel and she played his tape over and over and over again. Sometimes she would let Jojo and the other kids listen on her headphones. The song she played the most was "Only the Good Die Young."

"So be as bad as you can be, you'll live longer!" she would exclaim.

Many adults and staff on the ward didn't think it was a very appropriate song, but Jojo and Nurse Kelly knew that it somehow made Tessa Dawn feel better.

"Tessa Dawn, sweetie, it's Christmas Eve day. Wouldn't it be nice to sit up and see the sunshine?" Nurse Kelly coaxed.

She opened the blinds on Tessa Dawn's side of the room and let the day blaze in. It was a glistening morning with bluebird skies and sparkling snow.

Tessa Dawn only replied in soft moans. "Home?"

Jojo watched in hesitation as Nurse Kelly wound up Tessa Dawn's bed until the patient was partially sitting up.

"Home?" Tessa Dawn gurgled again.

Nurse Kelly pulled down the bed's sidebar and sat next to Tessa Dawn, stroking her duck-fuzz hair.

"We'll talk to your mom and dad when they get here. OK?"

As if on cue, Christmas carols began their barrage of "in-your-face festivities" over the hospital's loudspeaker. Jojo watched in delight as the staff danced down the halls, in and out of rooms, skipping through their morning rounds, dropping a little love at every child's bed along the way.

Parents, who hadn't stayed the night, started to arrive in droves and Tessa Dawn's were the first. Jojo pursed her lips together nervously as she watched Nurse Kelly sweep them out of the room immediately.

Now, Jojo didn't always understand the inner workings of adult secrets but she knew what bad news looked like. A mother's palm cradling her mouth, sometimes her chest; a father's fists jamming into his coat pockets hard enough to punch the entire world out through the bottom of them if he could, accompanied by the incessant throat clearing of a grown man trying not to cry. She'd seen her own parents do that when she first arrived at Silver Banks, and in that moment she knew Tessa Dawn wouldn't be going home for Christmas.

Jojo managed to get herself out of bed and over to Tessa Dawn. She climbed up into the bed and cuddled into her frail friend.

"I wish Santa and all the Christmas angels were here right now so I could ask them to make sure you get to go home today," said Jojo.

Tessa Dawn turned her head towards Jojo's.

"Can you do something for me?" Tessa Dawn whispered.

Jojo nodded. Tessa Dawn then whispered softly into Jojo's ear.

Jojo pulled back and looked at her for a moment, scared and confused. Tessa Dawn reassured her that everything would be OK.

Jojo's parents arrived shortly thereafter, wearing smiles bigger than crescent moons. Maureen Pyne carried a pink and purple convertible ski jacket that Jojo knew was the perfect size for going home in. Her dad, Teddy Pyne, was giddy and bursting like, well...like a kid on Christmas Day.

"We get to take you home sweetheart!" he announced, "Isn't that just wonderful?!"

Yes, it was wonderful, Jojo thought, but how could she possibly go home and leave Tessa Dawn at the hospital? It just didn't seem like the right or fair or Christmassy thing to do. Like, at all.

"Could we have Christmas Eve here with Tessa Dawn and her family and my other friends too?" Jojo asked, cautiously.

Maureen and Teddy were quick to find reasons why they couldn't stay.

"But we waited so long for this and...and we've decorated the house just for you," Maureen stuttered.

"There are so many presents and goodies waiting for you at home, sweetheart," Teddy pleaded.

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Jojo was torn. The eagerness in their voices landed hard on her heart. They had all been waiting for a long time for this, but Jojo knew Tessa Dawn and her family had been waiting longer. Maureen noticed her daughter gazing over at Tessa Dawn and her parents. She understood the situation immediately. A mother knows another mother's pain.

Under a stifled sigh, Maureen suggested, "You know what, you've made some wonderful friends here Jojo. It might be a nice idea if we all spend Christmas Eve together before going home."

Once the decision had been made, Teddy and the other fathers, looking for any kind of task to keep them from punching the world through their pockets, rallied to gather all the things required for a much needed injection of joy on the children's ward today. This meant quick trips home to grab portable stereos, cassette tapes, photo cameras, Santa suits, unopened presents, eggnog and all the things fathers know make Christmas extra special.

The hospital staff gathered cots, beds, blankets and pillows to make sure everyone had somewhere to sleep. Jojo was quick to point out to Nurse Kelly that this would never happen on any other night of the year! Nurse Kelly told her she was right.

The night swelled into a magical soiree of tall tales, caroling, dancing and an endless supply of twinkling moments.

Amidst the revelry, Tessa Dawn smiled, soaked it all in and stayed awake as long as she possibly could. When Jojo noticed her friend starting to fade, she grabbed the portable cassette player that Teddy had brought in. Shuffling stealthily over to Tessa Dawn's bedside with it, she slowly turned down the Bing Crosby's Christmas Classics cassette that was already playing. Jojo then gently placed it on the bed next to Tessa Dawn, ejecting Bing Crosby and carefully replacing him with Billy Joel. Miraculously, the tape was already set to Side B, Song 2. Jojo pressed play and turned up the volume.

As "Only the Good Die Young" echoed throughout the room, their parents reacting in varying degrees of disbelief, laughter and confusion, Jojo wrapped her tiny hand around her friend's fingers.

"Merry Christmas, Tessa Dawn."

Tessa Dawn smiled, lightly looped her fingers into Jojo's and whispered, "Thank you. I guess I'm a good one."

And there, held in the bosom of moonbeam blessings and wrapped with the light of love in its rawest form, Tessa Dawn said her goodbyes and went "home" for Christmas.

Angie Nolan is a Whistler-based writer, actor, educator and award-winning filmmaker.

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This just in from the North Pole...

By G.D. Maxwell

It was a message that startled much of the world. A slim but stark press release from the North Pole: "Santa Inc.—as it turns out a subsidiary of the hedge fund Frozen Assets LLC—has threatened to cancel Christmas unless an immediate bailout can be arranged no later than... what part of immediately do you not understand?"

And at the North Pole, formerly jovial Saint Nick, looking rather uncharacteristically gaunt, hitched four of his eight tiny reindeer to a sleigh badly in need of a fresh coat of paint. "What am I going to do?" he implored.

"Now, now dear," Mrs. Claus said. "It'll all work out. Have a cookie and some milk."

"A cookie and some milk? Good grief, woman. I'm 200 pounds overweight, up to my eyeballs in stress, about to embark on a humiliating mission, still trying to work off the cookies and milk from last year's Christmas Eve jaunt and the sharks are circling! Are you trying to kill me off?"

Mrs. Claus gave Santa "the look," part understanding, part exasperation, part pull-up-your-socks-and-do-your-job, it was her most effective weapon.

Without further ado, Santa crawled into this sleigh, prodded the reindeer into action and came, red cap in hand, to the U.S. Senate pleading for emergency funds, having gotten nothing but a vague promise of infrastructure loans and sunny days ahead on his stop in Ottawa.

"I'm not asking for a bailout for myself," he told the senate finance committee, an old familiar twinkle in his eye. "What I need is an emergency loan of $12.6 billion dollars to ensure Christmas does indeed come this year for every boy and girl around the world who have, all things considered, been more nice than naughty."

The old man—flanked by lawyers and financial advisors—was near tears as he rattled off the litany of woes swirling around his workshop at the rapidly melting North Pole. Normally stoic and unmoved by such displays of "failed business plans," even many Senate Republicans were visibly moved as Santa educated them on the realities of bringing Christmas cheer to children around the globe. Many, but not all.

"You may not be aware of this," the old man said, hanging his head, "but reindeers, particularly at the North Pole, live quite a long time. Much longer than their strong little bodies can effectively pull a heavily-laden sleigh."

"Even though I still shout, 'Now, Dasher; now, Dancer; now, Prancer and Vixen; etc.,' the reality is this: the original Dasher, Dancer, et. al., have been dead for many, many years. Their children are no longer with us either. Ditto grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. But many of their progeny are still alive and eating me out of house and home. The legacy costs of pensions and healthcare for thousands of aging reindeer alone has added, on average, a 25-per-cent premium to the cost of every doll, every train set, every toy I deliver."

"Those so-called legacy costs," drawled Barney Bellicose (R. Georgia), "are the result of sweetheart deals you signed with the International Sleigh Haulers Union, are they not?"

"I had no choice," Santa replied. "A strike by the reindeer at Christmas would be game over. Besides, what would you have me do with the thousands of reindeer who poured their hearts into assuring children all over the world enjoyed Christmas?"

"Waaalll, offhand, ahh could suggest y'all might eat 'em," replied the senator. "Cheaper than mollycoddlin' 'em in their old age. That's how we handle things in mah neck of the woods."

Santa continued by describing how his legacy costs were further exacerbated by the staggeringly large number of retired elves. "You'd think there's such joy in making toys for children that the elves would be content to tinker away and die at their work benches. Alas, no. Even though we did away with mandatory retirement decades ago, wham, they hit 65 and it's off to Florida to lie in the sun and suck back cheap beer, the fat little bastards."

"If y'all 'ada been smarter," interjected senator Ronnie Rougechapeau (R. Louisiana), "y'all woulda outsourced their unionized asses a long time ago. Them elves in India don't even know what in blazes the word retirement means. Let the ungrateful sons a' bitches beg in the streets if they don't wanna work."

"If the senator will remember, I tried the outsourcing thing a few years back. Do the words 'Poisoned Chinese Toys' ring a bell?"

"Hells bells, Santa, there are other countries in the world besides China with large pools of slave, er, cheap labour."

"Look gentlemen, ladies, the fact is, Santa Inc. is too big to fail. If I go down, Christmas goes down. What's good for Santa is good for the country. We're not just talking about one old man, a couple hundred elves and several thousand aging reindeer. It is generally accepted that scores of millions of jobs worldwide depend on Christmas for a disproportionate percentage of their livelihood. You don't want to face the wrath of the world's children if there's nothing under the tree on Christmas morning. Nobody wants that. Nobody can afford that! You can't get re-elected on that record."

"With all due respect, Santa, I believe you're overplaying your hand here," piped in Senator Erstwhile Gauche (D. Washington). "I have it on good authority Amazon is capable and ready to pick up the slack should you go under. Utilizing drone delivery and an army of robots at fulfilment centres, Mr. Bezos is confident the company can promise around-the-world deliveries on time."

"Amazon? How romantic. Can't wait for the poetry and cartoons to pour forth," said Santa, dismissively.

Having made his case, Santa left with empty promises as the assembled senators returned to their troughs for their annual Christmas party.

Checking his phone, his hopes fell further when a text from Chancellor Angela Merkel informed him the EU could not help. "I don't see how we can bail out Christmas without causing great discord within the Muslim communities of Europe," it said.

And word from Tel Aviv that the Israeli government just passed a $2.3 billion bailout for Hanukkah only made the outlook for Christmas less than merry.

As he left Capitol Hill, reporters on the scene said Santa, climbing into his sleigh for the return trip to the North Pole, was heard to exclaim, as he drove out of sight, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all...to all...oh, screw it, I'm getting too old for this scene."

Happy Holidays?

G.D. Maxwell is a long-time Pique columnist and all-around humbug.

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Merry Christmas, You Bastards: A Less-Than-Heartwarming Sequel

By Braden Dupuis

'Twas the night before Christmas, and up in the North,
The man they call Santa, he rocked back and forth.
His senile, angry impatience was clear,
He hadn't delivered a present in years.
His workshop was silent, his wife was long gone,
And everyone, everywhere, but him, was wrong.
The children were losers, he said to himself,
As he gorged on his cookies, mistreated his elfs.
The climate was changing, society too,
But Santa refused to believe it was true.
His sanity failed and he wailed in the snow,
while the ungrateful bastards debated below.
After all that he'd given and all that he'd done,
It appeared that his battle would never be won.
But he'd never give in and he'd never admit,
That his self-proclaimed throne was a small mound of shit.

It had been a long and solitary three years—even more secluded than what old Kris Kringle was accustomed to on his icy perch at the northernmost tip of the world.

In fact, it had been almost exactly three years, on this particular Christmas Eve night, since that damning report from NASA pinning the blame for catastrophic climate change solely on Santa and the methane emissions from his massive, sprawling, hideously unethical reindeer farm.

And though he threw his recently purchased phone in the fire that fateful night three years back, it wasn't long until Santa ordered his elves to construct him a new one.

Social media is addictive, he soon learned, and the best way for him to speak directly to the earthly public.

And so, rather than plot his annual route around the globe delivering presents to the children, Santa now spent his time tweeting—all his time tweeting.

He tweeted from the toilet, from his bed, and from the fireside.

He tweeted at all hours of the day and night, while neglecting his present-bearing duties.

The character-restrained diatribes all followed a similar script, denouncing his various enemies and creating his own narrative truth.

"The FAKE NEWS media wants you to believe I did the climate change, but in fact they are all CORRUPT and, frankly, embarrassing. Sad!"

And:

"If global warming is real, why is it snowing in the North Pole right now? FAKE NEWS #Santa2020 #MakeChristmasGreatAgain"

Also:

"If the #FakeNews media had any decency, they would admit that reindeer farts are actually good for the environment, and also the economy! NO COLLUSION!"

Global warming, Santa declared, was not a scientific fact—it was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government, in conjunction with the Easter Bunny.

But despite his angry, online ramblings, the entire world saw what Santa could not—that he was nothing more than a sad, tired old man, well past whatever prime he may have once enjoyed, mad with imagined power on an icy, isolated throne, far removed from reality.

And now the knives had come out.

The world had heard enough.

Santa's impeachment hearings had begun.

The impeachment of Kris Kringle

The media coverage was wall-to-wall, and the evidence was damning.

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As it turns out, Santa was, for lack of a better phrase, a real piece of shit.

One by one, the witnesses gave their testimonies, as the world watched on in awe and horror.

"Go ahead, little Timmy, tell us what you saw," the stern and intimidating leader of the impeachment hearings said on Day 4.

The assembled audience gasped and sighed, clasped their hands and clenched their teeth as Timmy laid it all out.

Breaking and entering, invasion of privacy, indecent exposure—Timmy's testimony covered all of Santa's misdeeds, carried out on an annual basis.

If little Timmy were to be believed, Santa was indeed a real piece of shit.

Santa wasted no time in attacking little Timmy's character on Twitter.

"Everywhere little Timmy went turned bad. He started off in his bedroom, how did that go?" Santa tweeted, referring to a rumored bed-wetting incident involving Timmy and his Fortnite bedspread.

"It is Santa's absolute right to deny presents."

For centuries, the mythical man was a beacon of truth, wisdom and youthful innocence untouched by the banalities of common bickering and judgment.

But the world was changing faster than ever before, and truth was now seemingly in the absolute eye of the beholder. Facts—or whichever alternative facts one chose to believe on any given day—were subjective.

All that mattered was what you believed in your heart, was Santa's argument.

And, in the end, the public ate it up.

For when it came down to it, it was far easier to simply create your own truth—to decide on your belief first, and callously form the facts around it afterward—than to think critically, deduct incisively, change your behaviours and sacrifice accordingly for the greater good.

Santa knew this.

And for that reason, Santa knew he would win.

An avalanche of Snowflakes

Back in the North Pole, in front of his roaring fire, Santa groaned satisfactorily into his easy chair, knowing that he had been fully exonerated, at least in the eyes of his most fervent supporters.

But then, they were never going to desert his side, were they?

For his truth was their truth—that the old ways were good ways, and traditions should never, ever change, no matter who was offended or hurt in employing them.

The dissenters were nothing but snowflakes, he knew—fragile and temporary, while crying out that they were unique and deserving of special attention.

He took a gigantic, gluttonous swig of milk, and ordered his nearest elf to bring him a tray of his finest cookies.

Then he picked up his phone, and set to tweeting.

His poetry, so eloquent and ephemeral in years past, had fallen by the wayside.

Everything was temporary now.

But even as he stared into his screen, fat, red thumbs tapping out angry nonsense and personal attacks, the world continued to change around him—unbeknownst to Ol' Saint Nick himself, and well beyond his own feeble, failing control.

As he tapped, the snowflakes he so derided piled up outside his door.

And before long, he would be buried.

To read Part 1 of this heartwarming Christmas tale, see "Time for Christmas tales," Pique, Dec. 25, 2016: piquenewsmagazine.com/whistler/time-for-christmas-tales/Content?oid=2873421.

Braden Dupuis is Pique's senior reporter and wearer of obnoxious Christmas sweaters.

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Once Upon a Christmas Past

By stella harvey

"We become eternal by being held in memory's loving arms."
-Richard Wagamese

She was sure the kitchen table would buckle. Its scrawny legs couldn't possibly hold up the hefty Christmas plates, the silver cutlery brought here from somewhere else, the hand-embroidered napkins, her mother's own handiwork and all those bowls and platters of food, every single one foreign to this country they now lived in: avgolemeno, kleftiko, moussaka, eggplant stew, zucchini in olive oil, potatoes, hummus, baba ganoush, taramasalata, and Greek salad with slabs of feta. The ingredients for this food found in small grocers run by people who had also come to this country looking for a better life.

On the counter were two more roasting pans—a ham in one and a turkey in the other.

"Call your father, sister and brother and their friends," her mother said, her apron, with its delicately knitted poinsettia, pulled a little tighter under the weight of her hands on her hips. "Your friend is in the living room, too. Go get her. It's time." Her mother smiled as she scanned the table. She adjusted one of the plates. "Perfect."

"But it's too much," she said. She used to like all these dishes that reminded her of a time now fading from her memory. A time when she had grandparents who fawned over her and aunts and cousins to take her to the park or the sea, a time before her parents had brought them all the way across the ocean.

"We left much behind to come to this country," her mother said. "This is the one time of the year where we remember what we were and celebrate what we have.

"Okay, but why the turkey and ham?" she asked. "Lamb is enough. Moussaka is enough. Any one of these things is enough." She was a teenager. She knew what was going on in the world. She read the newspaper everyday or at least whenever she could grab it before her mother.

If she didn't get it in time, her mother used the newspaper as a sort of cover for the table. She'd spread it out, then scatter a bag of walnuts on top. She'd then find an empty milk bottle and use it as a rolling pin to crush walnuts for her baklava.

How could she eat such sweet things when she'd read in the paper that a cyclone had hit Bangladesh earlier in the year, 500,000 people had died and others were left starving? Sixty-seven thousand people had died in an earthquake in Peru. Many others were left without homes, food, or water. How could she and her family justify all this food when so many others had nothing?

"We live in Canada," her mother said, "we must do as the Canadians. So we have ham and turkey, which is the Canadian tradition, and we also include our customary food. Something from our past and something from our present."

"It's not right. There are people suffering in the world."

"Yes, my serious one, there are. And that is why we are grateful for what we have. And we share. Each of us has invited a friend today to share our good fortune with us so we are not alone in our gratitude."

As a child, when she'd first come to this country, she loved the scents that reminded her of the home they'd left behind. It made her feel safe that they had so much, especially when she overheard her parents talk about where they would get the money for school fees or what would happen if her father was laid off. Somehow her parents found a way. But now it felt obscene to have so much.

"Go, get everyone," her mother said. "It's time."

They squeezed beside each other, one elbow knocking against another. Her father sat at the head of the table, her mother seated beside him.

Dean Martin crooned about a silent night on the stereo in the living room. In the kitchen, the dull roar of multiple conversations tripped over each other. How could she not be carried away by the laughter, the discussion, the contentment? She smiled when her friend said, "my mother never makes this kind of food. What did you call that meat stuff again? It's so good." It's nice that her friends liked her mother's extravagances.

"Have some more, kleftiko," her mother said. "Or lamb, as you Canadians call it. My serious one thinks she can save the world if she doesn't eat."

"I've told her," her friend said. She took another bite of meat. "Not having enough food isn't fun. I should know."

She saw her parents glance at each other and nod. She wondered what secret they'd shared that she couldn't figure out?

Before she could give it much thought, she heard her father wonder where the bread was. Her mother jumped up to get the burnt offerings from the oven. Her father teased her mother. "You always forget the bread."

"It's our Christmas tradition," her mother said and laughed.

Yes, as long as she could remember her mother, despite all her preparations and planning always forgot the bread. "Next year, I'll remember," her mother said.

Her father laughed. "If you say so." He kissed her mother's hand.

She smiled and listened to more of the chatter and took a fork full of kleftiko.

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And Now for Christmas Present

Fragrances of simmering lamb, baked desserts, and aromatic spices will ignite a memory, a sense of something familiar. She is reminded of a home she once lived in and has visited more often as her parents have aged.

As with smells, her recollections can also be triggered by a glance or words uttered. "Where is the bread?" her father asks, and she imagines her mother cursing herself for forgetting the bread in the oven.

Her mother is not here anymore. But the table is still there; its bony legs have withstood the weight placed on them over the years. They don't make tables like that anymore, particularly in this world of disposability.

She's had eight Christmases without her mother and her mother's many, many platters of food. The few things she has brought in for Christmas dinner are for her father and come from his favourite bistro. There are many Greek restaurants in this city she grew up in. It no longer looks like the city she and her family immigrated to so many years ago.

"It's good," her father has said each year since her mother died. "Not like your mother's, though. That woman had special hands. She could make anything."

"It's better than anything we could do," she has told him.

Her father laughs. "It's a wonder we haven't starved without her. Neither one of us cooks." His eyes get slightly teary, as if he is picturing her mother in the kitchen fussing over the stove or setting the Christmas table.

"Yup, you said it," she says.

"And you never liked all that food, anyway."

"It was just too much," she said. "When so many had nothing."

"It was how your mother showed us how much she loved us and the others we invited to our home. This is how we gave thanks for coming to this country. She wasn't any different from you. She tried to save the world too. You have to understand this, my serious one. She thought she could do it one person at a time."

Her friend from so many years ago is at the kitchen table, too. "She used to feed us," she says. "Your mother knew we didn't have enough."

She remembers that expression her parents exchanged all those Christmases ago, swallows hard to control the tears she doesn't want her father to see.

"Where's the bread?" she hears his insistent words again.

This time she startles awake, sits upright in her childhood bed and slowly realizes her father is gone now too.

She is here to celebrate her first Christmas without him. She's not sure where or if she'll find solace. That first Christmas without her mother, they packed bags for the Food Bank as her mother had done since these places came to be in the early '80s. "She gave money to the Sally Ann before that," her father said, "every year." So she made a donation in her mother's name. Over dinner, they told stories about her, the things she made, and the bread she always forgot in the oven. They laughed and toasted her and the ache of losing her waned a little. They've celebrated her mother every year since in the same way, and with it, grief passed.

The hole left in her life and stomach after her father's death this year couldn't possibly pass. She feels the lacking every day, even as she stuffs more into her life to distract her. Nothing seems to help.

As she gets out of bed, it comes to her. She is thankful, too, for having had the parents she had. And what did they always tell her: show your love and gratitude, oh serious daughter of ours.

Her siblings and their friends, along with her friend and others, will be back this year. One last Christmas in this old house, her parents' house. OK, she still can't cook. Nothing has changed there. But there are many restaurants she can order her family's favourites from. She knows the table will hold up under the weight, at least for one more year. And maybe this year, she'll remember the bread her father could never seem to do without. Or perhaps this story of her mother's forgetfulness will be handed down through the generations. And the retelling will bring a smile of recognition and a link to the past.

Stella Harvey is the director of the Whistler Writers Festival and author of three novels; her latest is Finding Callidora.



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