Making Christmas

‘Our mother was an uncommon Cree woman who worked to learn things’
It seems like a lifetime ago and perhaps it was. In the 1950s, if our parents had to figure out things like money, they never talked about it. Indians worked where we could. You could see them out there as we travelled in summer.
The men’s and women’s skin was turned to nut-brown as they worked in the sun. The women had their hair in bright scarves sometimes, working too. As you travelled across Alberta or Saskatchewan, you could see them. Men in summer, moving rocks with a prying pole or making hay stacks. They were stringing barbed wire and making fences.
But we were no different than most Indian families on the reserve except that our parents travelled more and this is also another reason my sister, Bernie and I stayed in the convents.
On holidays, our parents came for us, most times. Travelling back in the car at night, the Saskatchewan fields stretched far off into a wide expanse. Sometimes, a hill rose surprisingly in the flat land. It always seemed colder in Saskatchewan.
There were fewer houses then and so you travelled into the darkness. Before you got to a town, you could see its lights, fireflies. But if you awoke as the sun arose, you would know nothing is so beautiful as the Saskatchewan prairie. Gold glinted off the cropped winter wheat. There was something steady to awake and hear your parents talking quietly.
If we got to the reserve at night, there was the edgy feeling of driving in and half-riding the rutted roads. Branches were so close that they scraped at the car. But it was daytime, when we came in so the reserve dogs came to outrun the car.
This one time, we came home for Christmas and that’s the time I want to tell you about. We stayed at my Kokum’s house, a log cabin. It was there with the windows boarded up for she been gone already some years.
“Lyle. The coal-oil lamp and the blankets are in the box.”
My mother was practical in most ways. It didn’t take her long to get things set up in the cabin. Soon, we were in the cabin listening to dad’s axe cutting fire for the stove. And the coal oil lamp was lit and casting shadows while we covered up with blankets and waited for the fire.
In that time, darkness was heavy indigo blue. So the halo of light was our circle where we watched as our mother made sandwiches and waited for dad to fire up the wood stove.
Our bed would be set up by the window and on the floor with lots of wool blankets. Mostly, these blankets were made up with old wool coats cut into squares that made them warmer. Our mother was efficient. She was also an uncommon Cree woman. One time, she had decided she wanted a two-storey house on the reserve. She either ran out of money or there were no architectural plans and the men she hired didn’t know how to proceed. Either way, the wooden frame with the steeple stayed there for a long time.
Where had she learned to do things? It must have been when she had to leave school in Grade 3 to take care of her mother. There was a comfort in knowing how to do things well. Wherever we went, there was a routine because the way that she took things from the grub box or the boxes of stuff. Dad was the one who was more outgoing. He was older and knew more of the world.
We were on the reserve that time at Christmas. Mom didn’t yet have a tree but had some garland strung up. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Things were like that. Dad went out to snare rabbits and if we were quiet then we could go too. There was something about the way the way that the light made shadows and the free air. Perhaps, it was freedom and it made it more difficult to leave when the time came for school.
“What are you learning?” dad would ask us. And Bernie and I would do our counting for him.
“Are you still the fastest runner?” he would ask my sister who was tall and could run fast.
“What kind of work do you do?” he would ask. And we would list the things we did, polishing shoes or washing stairs as these chores were the usual stuff for the little kids at the convent.
“Do you have time to play games?”
And then, we told him that we did Skip to Maloo and played ball sometimes.
“Well. It is good you are home with us. And maybe, we could have our own game of baseball for Christmas. ”
Back at the cabin, there were a few boxes still under the bed back at the cabin. But no box that looked large enough to hold a baseball bat.
The next day, we asked about the baseball game.
“Tomorrow and if it’s nice then we will play baseball.”
“But we looked under the bed. And there is no bat in the boxes that are under the bed.” Bernie said.
“That is okay. I will make a bat. I have a piece of wood picked out.”
Dad laughed.
As it turned out, when it warmed up, dad brought out a piece of wood.
It wasn’t just like the kind that there was in the convent. But it had roughly the same shape though it had whittle marks, one could see it could be a bat.
“Come on kids. Lets go make a diamond.”
So we were out there spreading wood chips on the home and first base, and finally on second and third. We trampled the snow down and then dad called. “Come on, Claudia. Bring the ball out. It is time to play.”
When mom came out of the house, she was wearing dad’s extra parka. And she had on extra mittens. In her hand, there was something round. It was a ball. She looked like she was serious and ready for baseball. Uncle Paul’s hat that he had given her was on her head and with the earflaps, she looked like one of the Air Force flyer guys we had seen in films at the school.
“Play ball.”
Dad sounded like it was a serious game.
“Okay. I will be the pitcher and Gail you are on second and third. Bernie you can watch first.”
“Okay, Claudia, youre up. Go up, now. Over there.”
Mom walked to where dad was pointing. And then he said, “Okay let it fly.”
As he threw the ball, it didn’t go far and he had to go closer to really throw it.
“Okay now, nicimoose (girlfriend). Hit it!”
Mom had both hands on the bat and she hit it.
“Now run, Claudia. Run!” he said, pointing to first.
So she ran to first. And then, she turned and ran back to home base.
“Hey, no fair.” Bernie was yelling.
”Hey! Why you running that way? You got’ta run there and there?”
So mom holds up the bat and dad swings back just like it is a real ball and heavy. He come closer and throws the ball. Mom laughs and then she swings and hits the ball and runs to first and home. She does this a few times and all the while she is laughing.
Dad shrugs. “Well. Bernie. Your turn to bat.”
I could see that mom was watching as dad threw the ball and Bernie hit it. Then, we tagged Bernie out. Soon, the game was going like it was supposed to. But the ball was soft and didn’t go far.
We were eating supper later. Dad asked, “So Claudia, how come you didn’t sew that ball of binder string into the ball, then?”
“Why, it could fly and then it could hit somebody in the head. When you told me, you were going to hit it, I just put in an old rag.”
Our mom was like that, she was always thinking of things. Both of them were like that. They made things, made do. Where our father came from a farming family, he knew certain skills.
Our mother was an uncommon Cree woman, she would work to learn how to do things that she did not know.
I did not figure out until years later that she had never (before that game) played baseball.
But even so, at that time both of them took the time to make a Christmas.
It was like that.