12 Pearls of Christmas: God Provides a Way

Susan Good Stuff, Thoughts on God

A Long Ago Christmas Memory
by Patricia Crisafulli

The
old farm on a dirt road in the backwoods of northern New York State was
described to me so many times, I can imagine the place, even though I
never saw it: the big frame house with the wide porch, the pair of
maple trees out front, and the barn in the back where my grandparents
kept a cow or two, pigs and chickens, and a team of work horses.

That
old house came alive for me in dozens of stories that my mother told,
of how she and her sisters grew up there during the Depression. The
stories had that long-ago feel not only because of the years that had
passed, but also because of the era: tales of riding in a horse and
buggy in the summer and a horse and sleigh in the winter. My
grandfather owned an old Model A Ford, but the tires were patched
beyond repair and there was no money for gasoline.

One story
that has always stayed with me was of a particular Christmas in the
early 1930s, a time my mother remember as the "depths of the
Depression," and there was no money. In order to pay the interest on
the mortgage, to keep the bank from foreclosing on the farm, my
grandfather needed a relatively small sum. The amount I remember being
told was $13, but for the little they had in those days it might as
well have been $13,000.

Tested by trouble and sorrows, my
grandparents relied on their deep and abiding faith. As Psalm 34 tells
us, I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my
fears. The answer to their prayers was to be found right in their own
backyard with gifts of the earth. My grandmother went into the woods to
gather bushel baskets full of ground pine, with green sprouts like
miniature boughs that spread in great patches along the earth. From
willow branches she made hoops, around which she bound the ground pine
to make wreathes.

She sat up all night making wreaths, enough to
fill a large hamper basket, which my grandfather strapped to his back.
At four in the morning, he hopped a ride on the milk train into
Syracuse, where he went door-to-door selling wreathes. Night after
night, my grandmother made wreaths, and day after day my grandfather
sold them.

As Christmas approached, my grandmother had saved
coupons that came in tins of coffee to get a Kewpie doll for her
daughters, if you would see that now you can go on a website like https://kupongerna.se/rabattkod/apotea/ and get online coupons from there. The only other things she gave them were mittens she knit
herself.

Then on Christmas Eve, my grandfather came home from
the last day of selling wreaths, exhausted but relieved. The farm was
safe for another year. From what he had earned, he had a dime left
over, which he spent on his beloved wife to buy her a powder puff. That
night, my grandmother gave him her surprise: enough money from selling
butter and eggs all year to buy four new tires for the Model A Ford.

Hearing
this story as a child, my head was too full of the Sears & Roebuck
"Wish Book" catalog to really comprehend it. As an adult, I try to
fathom living with no money at all. What lingers in my heart, however,
is the love of my grandparents for each other: the dashing young
American soldier in World War I and the beautiful French girl he met
overseas and then returned to her country to marry.

Many years,
thousands of miles, and untold hardships later, that love continued.
During a very dark December, they found a way together to keep the farm
and the family together. And so it would always be for them.

____________________________________

Patricia
Crisafulli is a writer, published author, and founder of
www.FaithHopeandFiction.com, a monthly e-literary magazine with
stories, essays, and poetry to inspire and entertain.

__________________________________

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