A CHRISTMAS LETTER by BOOMERCAT RATED FRC

Grandma sends her friend a letter.

My dearest friend,

Oh, Tina, how welcome your letter was! I had been moping around in our beautiful paradise bemoaning the fact that our Christmas was not going to be white. How childish that seems when you tell me that there hasn’t been a blue sky in over a month!

Our skies always seem to be blue. Even when it storms, it never lasts long, and the rainbows are something to behold. When you write of blizzards and slush in the streets, it reminds me of the downside of that white Christmas!

Like you, I’ve been hard at work, getting ready for the holiday. While I don’t have the church bake sale or charity baskets to worry about, I do have plenty of baking and cooking to do. I know I’ve mentioned the mission over on Moyla. I’ve more or less adopted the missionary people who come down from Utah to do service. They come a dozen and a time, and they are all painfully young. For most, it is the first and probably only time they will be away from home at the holidays.

This last weekend, Scott and I packed up a plane load of cookies and pies and cakes and flew over. You should have seen their eyes shine! As missionaries, they simply do not have the wherewithal to get the kind of baking supplies that are just everyday shopping items in the states. When I opened the box with the gingerbread men, one of the young ladies simply broke into tears.

Scott, of course, has experience at being away from home on a holiday, and he soon had them all laughing and enjoying themselves to beat the band. He is such a love. You know, he has always been so serious, but he has this goofy streak that he only trots out on special occasions. I know by the end of the day, half of the young ladies had fallen madly in love with him, and the other half were only circumspect because of my presence.

Today, the boys set about decorating the house. Alan and Gordon found a tree somewhere on the island that bears a faint resemblance to a pine, if you discount the wide leaves and spicy pods. They brought it in with great ceremony, and all of them set to decorating it.

I kept my peace. I didn’t think there was any way that plant would bring about a Christmas spirit. But wouldn’t you know, with Virgil’s direction, and about a million twinkling lights, it really is quite beautiful.

As usual, they conned me into making gallons of popcorn for the popcorn strings, and also as usual, what they didn’t eat, they flung at each other in what Scott dubbed the snowball fight. And I’ll admit, after a few minutes, the living room looked as if a blizzard worse than the one you mentioned had taken place. You know I don’t put up with much, but the boys have been working so hard lately that I didn’t say a word.

Speaking of the boys, I’ll tell you right now, I read your letter out loud to the entire family after dinner tonight. It was so full of news that they all sat hanging on every word. Men don’t miss a hometown in the same way that a woman does, but as they heard about Carl Milstein’s grandson’s attempt to raise that 4H calf, they all grew quiet, and I could see the memories flowing.

Of course, we had already heard of Wyatt Esterhaus’ engagement. He has asked Scott to stand as his best man, and there is no way that Scott would refuse him. As you know, Jeff has very strong ideas about work and the boys leaving the island, but when Scott simply announced the date, Jeff just nodded, knowing full well there was no point in argument.

For his part, Jeff was very interested to hear of Molly and Dave Terjean’s divorce. You’ll remember that Dave and Molly were both very close to Jeff during their school years, and there was a point where Molly was Jeff’s girl, and if things had been different, they could have landed up together. While Molly was always a sweet girl, I can’t imagine her as the mother of five rough boys. She barely seemed able to handle one daughter.

At any rate, I know Jeff will be calling both Dave and Molly to offer support. He was clearly upset to hear of their breakup.

So, after all of your news, I know you’ll want to hear of the ‘doings’ here on the island. Well, as I said, the boys got the house decorated today. Despite the warm sunny weather, the spirit of the season is upon us. John called this morning from that observatory of his. We spent a good hour, just him and me, chatting about all manner of things. He is in very good spirits these days as he has just finished his fourth book, and it will be published next spring. Of course, he’ll be sending you an autographed copy. Who knows, maybe some day it will be worth a million!

Virgil is also feeling mighty fine. He and Brains finally finished up that design I was telling you about. The one for the mining equipment. They built a prototype and took it over to the other side of the island to test it. I could tell the test was very successful because I could see a huge smile on Virgil’s face when they got back.

It was about all I could see. Their toy apparently pulverizes rock quite nicely, but being men, they hadn’t considered what would happen to all of the dirt and dust that all that pulverized rock creates. When Virgil walked in the house, he looked like he’d been living in a chimney. If it hadn’t been for the smile, I swear, I wouldn’t have recognized him. He was black from head to foot. It took Kyrano and I a week to get all of the dirt out of the carpet.

I gave him a piece of my mind, I can tell you. But as you know, Virgil is really much more thoughtful than that. He’d just been so excited by his success that he wanted to tell Jeff all about it, and hadn’t realized how filthy he was. He made it up to me as he always does. He wrote a lovely little Christmas carol that had me in tears. I’ll have him record it for you.

Did you see Alan on TV the other day? You can imagine how he is doing. Despite all of the hard work he does for his father, he still manages to win those races. The trophy for the Dubai race was this gaudy cup over four feet tall. He wanted to put it in the middle of the lounge. He was quite proud of it, and even though it really was tacky to my taste, he just loved it. That was, of course, only until Gordon pointed out that it probably could serve double duty if it were put in the bathroom. I was hard put not to laugh, I’ll tell you. Of course, no one else had any such compunctions, and once it’s resemblance to a urinal was pointed out, not even Alan could look at it without chuckling.

Despite that, Gordon is Alan’s chief cheerleader, and his father and brothers aren’t very far behind in their admiration. Alan tries to be nonchalant about it, but you can see his eyes shine at every compliment.

The other day Gordon asked me if I would make krumkake for Christmas. I hadn’t really planned on it. As you know, they are a very work intensive kind of cookie, and they go just as quickly as any cookie that’s half as hard to make. But Gordon really doesn’t ask for things all that often, and it just isn’t in my heart to refuse him.

And in all honesty, I have more time these days to do things. When you’re doing cookies for forty charity baskets, you have to take as many shortcuts as you can. But doing just a few things for those kids over on Moyla and the rest for the family, I really can take the time for krumkake. And while I’m at it, I’m thinking of doing a gingerbread house. You know how Gordon and all of the boys love those.

Anyway, Gordon is doing just fine. He is such a good-hearted soul. He raises spirits just by being in the same room with you. Oh, and you’ll never guess what he’s building. You’ll remember one of his ambitions as a child was to capture one of Santa’s reindeer. I’ll never forget the year he dug up my camellias. Anyway, he’s building himself a reindeer trap. He showed us all the plans, and it looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption on steroids.

He keeps walking through the house carrying odd little bits of plastic and wood, and the strangest tools you’ve ever seen. The boys all just roll their eyes when he walks through, but I notice a lot of quiet smiles, which of course, is exactly what he is aiming for. I doubt we’ll see this trap this year. I’m sure he’ll drag it out over at least a few years before he delivers something bright and colorful and full of cheer. I’ll be sure to ask him to send you a copy of his ‘plans’.

Jeff is doing well. If you watch the financial news, you know his company is thriving. And with all the boys so happy and well, he is in fine fettle. That heart scare from last fall has resolved itself. As I told you, Scott took the lead in pushing his father to take things easier. Of course, for Jeff, that means only working nine hours a day rather than twelve. Scott watches him like a hawk, and orchestrates his brothers to insure that Jeff takes breaks throughout the day.

It was an adjustment, but Jeff is pragmatic enough to understand that he can’t keep up that vicious workload without consequence. And I believe it was the look on all of the boys faces when he collapsed that awful day that convinced him more than anything that he wants to stick around as long as possible.

He and I had a nice quiet lunch together the other day, just the two of us. He was telling me about the Christmas gifts he got the boys this year, and his face just shone talking about it. He loves nothing more than giving his sons pleasure. While I’ve often tried to convince him that his boys would love him even without the gift extravaganza that he puts on every year, I must say he does know exactly what will make them smile.

And as you know, nothing makes me smile more than my boys, all of them. I will admit that I’m feeling my age more and more these days with odd little aches and pains here and there. But seeing what a fine group of men I raised, I can’t help but be proud. And amazed. And content to boot.

As you can tell, my Christmas is set to be a joyous one. I wish you could be here to bask in all of the love in the household. But as you can not, know that we all send you our very best for the most wonderful Christmas and a peaceful and blessed New Year.

Love,

Ruth