I have to be in a good mood to write these, it has been a long time, in fact I have felt a little guilty for enjoying things now that my dad is gone, but I know my dad would want us all to be laughing as much as possible and enjoying life. Every time he saw me his first question was always, "are you sad?" He did not want his family to "catch" the sadness that he had found in his lonely bedroom. In an attempt to make my dad happy and not be sad I will attempt to take the lighter side to life once again and enjoy each moment.
Christmas Candy
My mom loves Christmas candy. She will tell you that she likes to cook Christmas candy, but in all reality the only reason that she likes to make the candy is so that she can eat the candy. By the end of December each year I can always tell the time of year by the extra pudge in my mother’s cheeks. She will spend weeks making caramel, fudge, English toffee, toffee, turtles and homemade hot chocolate. As a child I loved to eat this candy, everyone loved to eat the candy including the tiny mice that lived in our home. If we ever forgot to cover the fudge it was easy to spot the little mouse footprints where the mice had been; the footprints became more of a trade mark than a nuisance.
“Wow, thanks for the candy,” people would say, “I love how your mother always puts her trademark on the fudge, it’s like I’m eating expensive European candy.”
“Yum,” I would reply having always been one to use few, but meaningful words.
My mom would make us run plates of candy to all of the neighbors, in this sentence the word “neighbor” means anyone who lived within a two mile radius of our house. It took hours and hours of labor to deliver all of these handmade treats, hours which came free to my mom so she really didn’t care about the enormous burden that this tradition placed upon me and my siblings.
One winter the weather was so bad that I was sure that we were off the hook, the least that would happen would be that my mom would drive us around to the different houses to deliver her goodies. My jubilation, animated as it was, did not last for long.
“Boys the plates are ready for special delivery,” my mom called as if inserting the word special would make us feel noble about our chore.
“But what about the snow?” I complained.
“Don’t worry about it, the treats they are wrapped in extra layers of plastic wrap, plus your dad has welded a couple of umbrellas to the red wagon so that the candy will stay nice and dry.”
“Oh, that’s just wonderful,” I replied, “but what about your children?” I replied.
“SPECIAL delivery,” she mouthed in an over exaggerated manner.
“I’m special,” Marne stated.
We all looked at her with a “we know you are” look.
“I apologize mother, when you put it that way how dare I complain. What a wonderful opportunity this will be for us to deliver your candy to your friends,” I answered in an extremely fake sounding voice.
“That’s better Bryan, I am glad you see it that way.”
The argument was fruitless, if it came down to saving the kids or the candy mom would rush the Christmas goodies out of the burning fire well before her own children. Out the door we went, I was wrapped in three coats, four scarves, two pair of gloves, three hats, and five pair of socks. I knew the dangers of the cold and I was going to do everything in my power to keep warm.
At the first stop just up the road from our house, I noticed that my mom had not accounted for sideways snow and that our red wagon was now completely full of snow. My brothers and I brushed off the snow as well as we could, but in the process Andy knocked the wagon over.
“Nice shot,” I sarcastically remarked, “come on guys let’s pick everything up”
“Hey knock it off!” I heard Dallin yell at Alex as he shoved his mouth full of Mom’s candies.
Dallin proceeded to pelt Alex with frozen pieces of fudge. “Eat this, and this,” he kept yelling at Alex.
“Dallin!” I yelled. The yell did the trick and Dallin dropped the rest of his ammunition.
Alex, now looking quite ridiculous with half his face covered in frozen fudge, and the other half covered in welt marks, picked up the fallen candy shoved in his pockets then took hold of the wagon and started pulling it up the driveway to our neighbor’s house. I rang the doorbell and a fat, old man opened the door. Andy shoved the plate of candy at the man.
“Candy,” Andy stated looking just like a Neanderthal.
“Ouch, careful boy,” the man replied as Andy, because of his stunted growth, had pushed the plate right into the man’s knee.
“Sorry sir, he’s in a hurry,” I apologized for my brother who had run off to the wagon in an attempt to hurry to the next house. He looked more like a gingerbread man running away than a boy with his tight winter clothing hugging his legs and arms so tight that he could not bend his knees and elbows. I turned to leave the doorstep and stepped on some ice, down I went hitting every limb on my body and the back of my head on the hard cement.
“Here have some candy, that will make you feel better,” said the senile man as he threw a piece of frozen fudge and my head before he slammed the door to keep the blowing snow out of his house.
“Hush up!” I yelled at my unsympathetic brothers who were laughing uncontrollably at my unfortunate blunder. I limped back to the wagon and we continued our trip. A couple of minutes later Alex lost the grip on the wagon, I saw it coming, but my body did not move the way that it used to before my horrible and tragic fall. I dove out of the way, but misjudged the distance. My quick thinking to act as a human speed bump, did however slow the wagon enough so that my brothers were able to stop the wagon before it got all the way down the hill.
“Good thinking,” Andy sincerely complimented.
“Yeah, nice moves ballerina boy,” Dallin couldn’t help himself. With all of his defaults, including his personal hygiene challenges, Dallin was always jealous that I was so much closer to perfection than he was and he had to get in his jabs every chance that he could get. I ended up slipping about ten more times during our long journey as I learned that slippery ice and injured knees and ankles do not mix.
“You boys are so cute,” Mrs. Riley kindly said at our last stop. “What’s wrong with your brother?”
“He’s had a few falls today,” Andy answered looking at my back, since it was the only thing visible after a face plant into the snow in Mrs. Riley’s front yard. Alex and Dallin both grabbed a foot and pulled me onto the street where oncoming traffic had a free shot at my crippled body.
“Let’s get home boys,” Dallin said to the rest of us.
Even though our house was only a few feet away, it took me about 30 minutes longer to get there than my brothers. By the time I got home my brothers had eaten all of the left over candy and blamed it on me. I didn’t mind the month of being grounded since it gave me the opportunity to rest from my injuries.
Another year of deliveries was over and I had suffered greatly. My dad like always just wanted to make sure that his wagon was taken care of and told me that the falls would make me a man. Mom was asleep and sick in her chair for the next two days because of all of the hard work of making Christmas candy (or eating too much of it), so she never did offer me the sympathy that I deserved for my amazing sacrifice.
