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The Christmas Present

I have to confess that, although I’m usually happy, I do not consistently look on the bright side. Things seem to muck along well enough if I don’t dwell on them, I suppose, but it is sometimes easier to create blank spots on certain days than to name them like so many others do. I don’t mean that I forget their quotidian weekday names, or the months in which they live, just the particular significance glued to them by those who eagerly await their annual reappearance. I remember their special names, of course -everybody does; I just feel it’s sometimes only optional to participate; I’m then simply a face looking through a shop window from the sidewalk -especially now that I’m retired.

There was a Christmas not so long ago that seemed particularly empty like that; it was once special for me, but that time it seemed just another unoccupied day like all the rest. I’m not certain why I decided not to participate; perhaps it was just my mood. My kids both phoned me, and there were all the usual invitations for dinner, but nothing seemed to fit. Or maybe it was me, again, who didn’t slot into place somehow; as I age and the years stack up in unsteady piles, there are times I feel like that about things. But Christmas is usually different. Special. If nothing else, for me it was once a Family time. As a child, Christmas morning was when we all sat on the carpet around the tree we’d decorated, and after the presents were opened, but before the traditional Christmas breakfast, we would gather around the radio to hear the Queen’s annual Christmas message. It’s interesting how rituals like that are so wedded to a day; how empty of meaning the day becomes when they are not observed. When there’s no family gathered to celebrate, the day reverts to just another day, and its history evaporates…   

But being older is like that sometimes isn’t it? If the celebrations are not reincarnated, and you don’t find yourself wrapped in pleasant memories, the significance is lost -or, perhaps, it still awaits the Phoenix rising from the ashes still smouldering quietly from those days so long ago.

Of course, Christmas the year I’m talking about was shrouded in fog and a cold numbing drizzle; the Winnipeg Christmases of my childhood were not, and Yuletide memories are hard to reconstitute in rain. But sitting in the house by myself was equally unappealing. No stores were open, so even the mindless exercise of buying something, or seeing someone to talk to -if only the clerk- was not an option. The empty day stretched its arms and sighed as if it, too, were bored.

I find solace in trees; even in the rain, the crowds of them that huddle together in forests usually seem to make me feel less alone. Perhaps it’s the way they gather the mist in their branches and offer it to me as I walk; perhaps it’s their determination to shelter me as best they can from the harsher weather; or, perhaps, even with their limited sentience, they understand how I am feeling as I pass. And yet that day, when I really needed their reassurance, they seemed to ignore me as I wandered aimlessly along the Christmas-empty trails near my house.

The walk seemed purposeless in the rain. Meaningless; rather than dissolving large hunks of time it seemed to grow ever longer in the endless forest. The mist around the lake, when I finally reached it, seemed merely a blank space like the day: a lonely place where there were no trees. A senseless gray interval that served no identifiable function.

I stopped there, uncertain of whether to proceed or retrace my steps. Either choice was equally trivial; so I stood, as rooted to the spot as the trees around me. Mist slowly drifted across the lake, but nothing else moved; there was no reason for movement, no reason, really, to do anything…  

And then I felt them: the eyes watching me. I looked around uneasily, and sitting quietly beside me was a dog -a border collie staring at me, obviously waiting for me to notice it.

I don’t know whether it had been following me -I hadn’t noticed it before- but there it was. It seemed quite at home sitting beside me, and wagged its tail when our eyes met. Then, it picked up a stick it had found and dropped it at my feet for me to throw. I used to have border collies and I knew their games. They are constantly in need of a job to do it seems, and this one was no different. So I threw the stick, and he (I looked) immediately tore off into the underbrush where I’d thrown it. Back he came, almost shrugging his little shoulders at the measly challenge I had offered him, and urging me to up the stakes. So the next time, I threw the stick into a patch of wind-downed trees and he roared off again, only to return seconds later with not only the stick in his mouth, but a happier look on his face.

The game was on! I began to retrace my steps along the trail to find harder and harder problems for him to solve, denser thickets to penetrate. But no matter my thinking, he stayed one step ahead. I tried the usual feinting maneuvers, pretending to throw to one area, then changing my mind and hurling the stick to another, still all in vain. And each time, he returned with the stick and dropped it at my feet, seeming to laugh at my feeble attempts to confuse him.

One time, I really thought I had him. He dropped it beside me and I pretended I couldn’t find it, secretly stepping on it as if I were merely a human making yet another mistake. He stood in front of me, watching the stick I pretended I couldn’t find, and then -I’m sure I saw him roll his eyes- he simply ran into the bush beside the trail and brought me another stick to throw for him. He loved the game; I loved the game, and we continued playing variations of it all the way back to a fairly large creek not far from the trailhead. A little bridge was being built to cross it, but there were still only a few timbers that had been laid. I’d accepted the challenge of balancing my way across it when I’d first started the walk, but I didn’t know if the dog could make it across the narrow beams widely separated from each other. I looked around for another way I could get him across, but when I checked the almost-bridge again, I saw that he was already waiting for me on the other side. I should have guessed he’d just see it as a minor challenge; he seemed to be more than dog: he was my dog -on lease, like a babysitter hired to entertain and supervise me on the return walk.

The trail ends near the house of a woman who owns several border collies, so I assumed the dog was just one that had figured how to get through her fence. But as I passed her property, the dog suddenly sat down on the trail beside me, the stick no longer in his mouth -he must have dropped it somewhere along the way. He looked at me as I reached down to pat him and after wagging his tail as if thanking me for the day, he trotted off towards her house on the hill beside the forest.

I don’t know whether Christmas is actually celebrated by dogs, but I do know that he’d given me the nicest gift I’ve had in years…

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