All That Other Stuff
Ellie Harding rested her chin on her hand and stared
out of the window across the valley, relaxing as she always did at the sight of
the tall spire of the parish church surrounded by cozy-looking cottages
nestling under their Cotswold stone roofs.
Her daughter-in-law, Lori,
came in from the garden balancing a wicker laundry basket on her hip.
“I will be glad when Christmas
is over.” Lori heaved a dramatic sigh. “It’s nothing but rush and fuss, and no
one is ever satisfied. One week left, and I still have to mail cards, shop,
clean and for what? Just one day. And as for peace and goodwill, hark at that
lot.”
Sounds of discontent burst
from the living room where twelve-year-old Matthew and eight-year-old twins,
Molly and Hannah, were arguing over television programs.
“And not only that,” Lori
continued, “David is due home from Singapore on December 22nd, and,”
she paused for breath, “Mother and Dad are arriving the same day.”
“As David has been away for
almost six months, isn’t that a bit inconsiderate of them?” Ellie murmured. She
tried to keep the tone of censure out of her voice, but her brow puckered as an
additional thought sprang to her mind. “I thought your parents were spending
Christmas in Germany with your Aunt Sophie.”
Lori snapped a tea towel, making
it sound like a flag in a strong wind. She folded it in half, smoothed it out
with the flat of her hand, folded it again and added it to the growing pile of
clean laundry on the kitchen counter.
“They were, but Mother fell
out with Aunt Sophie over goodness-knows-what and decided she and Dad would
come here,” Lori explained. “Oh, Ellie, what am I going to do?”
“We’ll have a cup of tea,
dear.” Ellie, a staunch supporter of that particular beverage’s restorative
properties, thoughtfully put the kettle on. As it came to the boil, her eyes
began to sparkle with mischief.
“Park everybody,” she said
suddenly.
“What do you mean?” Lori
asked, plainly puzzled.
“I’ll take the children,”
Ellie said. “That should give you time for everything you need to do. Book your
parents into a hotel and yourself and David into another. That will give you
one day to yourselves, and then on Christmas Eve, you can all come to my
house.”
Lori’s eyes opened wide. “But
I couldn’t⸺.”
“Yes, you could. Don’t think
about it, dear, just do it.”
Between them, Ellie and Lori
helped the children pack and loaded them and their backpacks into Ellie’s
battered blue Audi. Matthew sat silently beside her on the drive out of town,
plainly not in agreement with the plan.
“What are we going to do at your
house, Gran?” Molly asked. “You don’t even have a TV.”
“I’m sure we can find
something to do,” Ellie replied, keeping her eyes on the narrow, two-lane road
where she had to stop for a flock of sheep passing from one pasture to another.
“We could do a nativity play,”
Hannah said as she watched the woolly bodies crowd either side of the car.
“There’s only three of us, and
we already did that at school.” Matthew sounded glum at the prospect.
“Yes, but did you design and
make your costumes?” Ellie asked.
“Well, no,” Matthew admitted.
“We just used the ones from last year.”
“Ooh, Gran, can I make a crown
with sparkles on it?” Despite being restrained by her seat belt, Hannah bounced
on the back seat with excitement.
“I’m sure we could arrange
that, dear. You three will be the Wise Men, and everyone else can be
shepherds.”
“And you have to be the angel,
Gran,” chorused Molly and Hannah.
“Can we invite friends from
school?” Matthew asked.
“I don’t see why not.” Ellie
drove through her gateway, minus its gate, and pulled up in front of a solidly
built ivy-covered stone house. “Who would you like to invite?”
“Well, Jamal, because he was
new to our school this term and doesn’t know many kids yet and Oliver because
he doesn’t have a dad.”
“And can we invite other
people too?” the twins asked in unison.
“Yes, you can,” Ellie assured
them. “Two friends each. The more the merrier, don’t you think?”
“Then I’ll ask Yasmeen and
Adeera,” Hanah said. “I hope their parents will let them come.”
“Yes, and Susan Howell and
Dawn Fry,” Molly added. Hannah nodded her agreement.
Ellie parked the car, and the
children poured out of it and in through the front door. They hung their coats
on pegs in the hallway and deposited their backpacks at the foot of the stairs.
“We’ll have hot chocolate with
marshmallows,” Ellis said as she headed to the large kitchen at the back of the
house. “While I make it, you can start designing your costumes.”
She took sheets of paper and
coloured pencils from a drawer and put them in the table’s centre. In no time,
the girls sketched outfits for the shepherds while Matthew, now warming up to
the idea, designed crowns for the Three Wise Men.
Over the next two days, Ellie
produced lengths of fabric, sheets of art paper, fancy buttons, glue and
glitters, rolls of florists wire and strands of ribbon. On a brisk afternoon
walk, with a light wind gusting from the south-west blowing the clouds inland
over the hills, they collected sheep’s wool from the barbed wire fencing around
their field.
“This will make the beards for
the Wise Men,” Ellie said as she held out a plastic bag for the children to
fill with wool.
“How?” asked Matthew.
“We’ll cut lengths of cotton
fabric and stick the wool to it, leaving a gap for your mouths,” Ellie said. “Then
we’ll cut lengths of elastic so that it fits your heads, sew the ends to each
side of the fabric, and you can just slip them on.”
“That sounds pretty easy,”
Matthew said. “I say, Gran, can I be in charge of the costumes?”
“You certainly can, dear,”
Ellie agreed.
Her angel wings fitting filled
an entire afternoon with the children measuring wire and fabric and calculating
the best way to affix them to Ellie’s back.
“Donny Williams sat on Carrie
Davis’s wings in class and broke them,” Hannah told her.
“Yes, and she cried,” Molly
added.
“Well, after all this work, we’ll
have to make sure we hang my wings where no one can sit on them,” Ellie said.
Together they draped and
stitched fabric and, once all the costumes were made, Ellie sat the children around
the table again and helped them write their invitations. Molly and Hannah
decorated theirs with sparkles, both sure the recipients would be pleased with
them.
The invitations were hand-delivered
and, when Christmas Eve finally arrived, so did the rest of the family and all
the guests, including Yasmeen and Adeera’s parents. After a happy and noisy
reunion with their father, Matthew, Molly, and Hannah helped everyone into
their costumes. Ellie couldn’t help but notice that Lori’s parents, Margaret
and Richard, looked somewhat bemused to find themselves clad in tunics made
from old bedsheets and cinched around the waist with frayed scarlet cords from
thrift store velvet curtains. When everyone was dressed, Ellie clapped her
hands, which made her wings wobble frantically.
“Quiet everyone,” she said. “Now,
who can tell me what the Three Wise Men did?”
“Oh, Gran, I know, I know!”
Hannah’s hand shot up as if she were answering questions in school. “They
followed the star.”
“Indeed, they did.” Ellie
nodded sagely. “Now, come this way.”
She took everyone outside and
then clapped her hands again. From the dark at the bottom of the garden, a
bright white light appeared amongst the old and gnarled apple trees. Its
silvery glow illuminated the whole area. She watched the children’s eyes open
wide in wonder and smiled as they stopped, in total astonishment, at the edge
of the lawn.
There, its legs folded neatly
beneath it, sat a camel. It turned its head towards them and looked at them
from liquid-dark eyes from beneath long lashes. A small tubby man, sporting a
large moustache and wearing a red fez, stood beside it.
“This is Fred,” Ellie said. “And
this,” she patted the camel’s sinuously graceful neck, “is Harun.”
Margaret sniffed. “Don’t
expect me to get on that filthy beast.”
Ellie hid a smile as she heard
Richard say, “Don’t worry, Mags, only the Wise Men rode camels. You’re a
shepherd. Here, hang onto your crook.”
Fred helped the children onto
the saddle, showing them where to put their feet and where to hold on as Harun
stood up. His spongy feet made no sound as he lurched and swayed across the
winter-damp grass.
“Mother, how on earth did you
manage that?” David asked as he caught up with her.
Ellie patted the hand he
slipped into the crook of her elbow.
“Oh, a phone call here and a
favour there,” she said casually. She clapped her hands once more, and the
light in the trees winked out before appearing again further away in the
paddock next to her garden.
“It’s over Mr. Donovan’s
stable now.” Molly couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice as she pointed
over a gate set in the hedge.
Mr. Donovan, as bent and
twisted as Ellie’s old apple trees, smiled at them as he opened the gate and
ushered them all through it. The little procession, at last, came to a halt outside
the stable. Harun obligingly collapsed his legs, and Molly, Hannah, and Matthew
all but fell off him in their eagerness for what they might see. They pulled
their friends forward with them, and all peered in at the stable door.
The sweet smell of hay
assaulted their nostrils, and they heard the rustling of straw as they looked
in on a cow contentedly chewing her cud, a donkey who flicked his long, fuzzy
ears at them, and a ewe with twin lambs. A young woman wearing a blue robe
smiled a welcome and invited them to sit on some straw bales placed in
readiness for the visitors. Beside her, a tall, bearded man wearing a brown
cloak welcomed everyone. Between them, laid in a wooden crib, a baby kicked its
feet and gurgled happily.
“Oh, Gran, this is magic,”
Molly whispered. She went to the crib and knelt beside it, staring down at the
baby as if she couldn’t quite believe it was there. Hannah, Matthew, and their
friends were more interested in the animals.
“Well, Ellie, I think you have
surpassed yourself,” Richard said, still looking around and taking in every
little detail with an expression of wonderment on his face. Even Margaret
seemed suitably impressed.
“This is so cool, Gran.”
Hannah looked up from the lamb she cuddled while Matthew and Jamal petted the
donkey.
Matthew’s eyes opened wide as
a thought struck him. “Christmas isn’t about what things we get, or what food
we have. It’s all that other stuff, isn’t it, Gran?” His pre-teen voice had a
croak in it.
Ellie nodded, adding softly, “That’s
right, Matthew. It’s all that other stuff. Christmas is for loving and caring,
sharing and,” she looked at Lori, “peace and goodwill.”
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