The Christmas Portrait (2 page)

And I am most thankful to my Father, the author of life, for instilling in me the desire to write stories. His parables not only teach us the truth of living life His way, they show us what He thinks about the power of the narrative. And I thank Him for the redbirds who sat in the feeder at my window as I wrote. I am grateful to Him for what I know about
faith, family, and forever.

P
ROLOGUE

D
R
. K
ATE, DO
they have Christmas in heaven?” Marla sat across the table from me. She held tightly to as many crayons as she could hold in her petite left hand and colored with her right.

“Now that's a very interesting question. Do you have a reason for asking?” I continued sketching, not giving any hint of my surprise at her inquiry.

“Well, my sister wanted this pretty necklace for Christmas. She showed it to me in the store window, and she wanted it real bad. But that man in the blue truck ran over her, and now she's in heaven.” Her crayon never left the page while she spoke. A Christmas tree, donned with a yellow butterfly tree topper, was taking shape on her page.

I laid my drawing pencil down, propped my elbows on the table, and leaned forward. “That's a good question, Marla. What do you think?”

“I think there's Christmas in heaven.” She never looked at me.

“I think so too. In fact, I think heaven may be like having Christmas every day.”

She continued to color. “That's good. That means Abby likes it. Maybe I could go there too.”

“I'm sure Abby likes it there, but for now, don't you want to stay here with your family?”

“Uh-huh, but I want to see Abby too.”

“I know you want to see your big sister.” I looked at her work, picked up my pencil, and started to sketch again. A likeness was appearing. “You're using all the bright Christmas colors today. That makes me so happy. Do they make you happy too?”

“I don't know. I just like red and green and blue and yellow.”

“So do I.”

“But you're not coloring. You're just drawing. Why don't you use colors like me?” She handed me the red crayon. “Here, you need this one.”

“Thank you, Marla.” I took the crayon and twirled it through the fingers of my left hand. “I'm just doodling while we talk.”

“Do you just sit here and doodle all day, Dr. Kate?”

How purely delightful that sounded. “You're just full of good questions today. I do get to draw sometimes, but mostly what I do is sit and listen and talk to people. I help them draw and color and make things so they'll feel better.”

“That sounds like a fun job. Is that why I have to call you doctor, because you make people feel better?”

“Well, I guess it is. Would it be okay if I ask you a question, Marla?”

“Uh-huh. I mean, yes, ma'am.”

“What's on your Christmas list this year?”

“I just mostly want my sister back, and I want my mommy not to cry at nighttime.” Marla stopped coloring and searched through the box of crayons. She chose the black one and started to scribble a jagged black border around her Christmas tree.

“You know, that sounds a lot like what your mommy wants for Christmas too. She wants you not to be so sad. That's why she brings you here to talk to me. Is there anything else on your list, like a doll, or maybe you'd like a necklace too?”

“Nope, I just want my sister back and my mommy not to be so sad. There's nobody to sleep in my sister's bed.”

I put my hand on hers and removed her crayon. “Marla, look at me, sweetie. I know this is your first Christmas without your sister, and it will be different. Do you know how I know that?”

She looked at me as though I were about to tell her the biggest secret she'd ever heard. “Because you're a doctor and you know things?”

“No. I know because I was just like you. When I was ten, my mother died, and I missed her so much, especially at Christmas. It was very hard, but everything turned out all right.”

I couldn't tell her that when Mama died that late September night she left a vacuum that sucked the life and color right out of my world. Overnight, the trees dressed in red and gold were only naked limbs, and the mountains on the horizon looked like chiseled gray stone pasted against a gray sky. The days became chilly and ushered in the coldest, snowiest winter on record in northern Kentucky. Even the earth mourned the loss of Mama.

“Do you still miss your mommy?”

“I do miss her. But now, I'm not so sad anymore. I'm just grateful she was my mother, and I'll never forget her. She's the one who taught me to draw, and she's the one who taught me my job in life is to try to make people happy. She'll always be with me because of my memories.”

I could tell her the days grew warm again even if it seemed forever. And the trees budded and the mountains turned green, but walking those mountain paths wasn't the same. No more holding Mama's hand or singing her silly songs. When the colors finally returned, I saw them differently. I could explain this to Marla. I just wish I could believe it for her. Only the passing of days would make her believe.

I asked Marla, “Don't you remember how we've talked about your memories of Abby?”

She nodded in agreement. “At home I tried to draw a picture about the time we went camping, and she caught the biggest fish.”

“That's good. That's really good, Marla. You keep drawing those pictures. Would you do something else for me?”

She looked up at me. “Sure.”

“I want you to put something on your Christmas list that Santa can put under your tree. I think that'll make you smile big on Christmas morning. Would you do that?”

“Yes, ma'am. I already know what it is.”

“That's good, and you be sure to tell your mom what it is. In fact, our time's almost up, and she's probably out front waiting on us.”

Marla slid her drawing into the yellow plastic pouch and started putting her crayons in the wooden box, lining them up neatly. I stood to help her.

“May I see what you're drawing, Dr. Kate?”

“Certainly, it's not finished though.” I slid my sketch pad across the table.

She looked at the drawing and then at me. “See, I knew you needed the red crayon. You like redbirds, don't you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“I thought so. They're everywhere around here.” Her eyes surveyed the room from her three-foot vantage spot.

I took her hand, and we walked toward the lobby. “You know how you chose the yellow butterfly to help you remember your sister? And we talked about how Abby was like a beautiful butterfly coming out of a cocoon and how she's free now.”

“Uh-huh, I remember. I draw yellow butterflies in all my pictures. I drew one today. It was on top of the Christmas tree.” She was swinging her arm and mine as we walked hand in hand through the studio. It was the first carefree, childlike body language I had seen since I met her a few weeks ago.

“That's good. Just keep drawing those yellow butterflies, and I'll draw redbirds because it helps me remember my mother. She had red hair, and she could sing like a songbird.” We entered the front office.

“There's a redbird!” Marla pointed to the embroidered bird in the center of the memory quilt hanging on the wall next to the door. “And there's another one!” She pointed to the grouping of pictures above the sofa. “Did you take that picture?”

“I did. I took that picture with my very first camera. The redbird was right outside our living room window.”

“Wow! I'd like to take a picture of a butterfly.”

“Maybe you can someday.”

Marla nearly lunged toward the sofa, and climbed up on both knees. She leaned close to see. “Dr. Kate, do you know him too?”

“Who, Marla?”

“Him.” Her eyes were fixed on the framed picture next to the redbird.

Her words halted my movement. I replayed them in my head. Do you know him too?

“You mean the man in that portrait I painted?”

“Uh-huh. Him.” She pointed to the picture and then looked at me.

“Yes. I met him a long time ago. Why? Do you know Mr. Josh?”

She turned around and sat down on the sofa. “I sort of know him. He was at the butterfly haven the other day, and he talked to me about missing Abby.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

“No. He knew my name though, but he never said his.”

“Marla, would you tell me about him?”

“He had on a different coat, and he didn't have all those colors around him, but it was him.”

Her response took me back twenty years back to Kentucky to that first Christmas without Mama.

C
HAPTER
O
NE

I
DIDN
'
T THINK TOO
much about redbirds until Mama and Daddy took me and my little brother on a Fourth of July picnic last summer. Daddy planned to go up to the mountain pass where the waterfall was because he knew it was one of Mama's favorite spots. From there she thought she could see Ohio and West Virginia and all the way up to the end of Appalachia. Daddy said she had some kind of special eyes if she could see all that, or else her geography was a little off, then he just laughed.

But Mama wasn't up to hiking the mountain trails that day, so we went out to Granny Grace's pond for our picnic and to go fishing. Daddy took my brother, Chesler, out in the boat. And that was when Mama—Diana Joy Harding—told me. Mama said it just like she woulda told me she was going to the store to get milk. “Katherine Joy, I'm going to heaven before long, not because I want to, but just because it's my time to go. I wish I could stay here to watch you grow up, but I don't think I'll be able to do that because I'm sick, and they've run out of ways to make me well.”

Then I saw the tear roll down Mama's cheek. I wanted to hold her just like I used to hold my baby doll that cried real tears. In all my life I had seen Mama cry only one time because she was sad. That's when Grandpa died. The other times Mama just cried from laughing so hard.

I knew all about going to heaven because Daddy explained it to me when Grandpa went. Going to heaven meant Mama would be in a better place, but she'd still be gone. I wouldn't see her anymore 'til I got there. I couldn't brush her long red hair, or sing her made-up songs, or hear her stories about all the trouble she and Aunt Susannah Hope got in to when they were little girls.

Seeing Mama's tears made me cry too. So we just sat there on that quilt, and I held on to Mama like I was never letting her go to heaven without me. She was quiet for a few minutes before she said, “So, Katherine Joy, I want us to choose something that'll always remind you I love you and that I'm still there in your heart and in your memory. Something that will make you remember me every time you see it.” It was right then that the redbird swooped down. A redbird. Just like Mama's hair. And that bird could sing like Mama too.

That was our last picnic. Mama got real sick, and she had to go to the hospital. Chesler and I stayed with Granny Grace for two whole weeks because Daddy was with Mama every minute at Cedar Falls Memorial. The doctors let Mama come home when she told them she had things to do. When Mama felt like it, she mostly played quiet games with us and cuddled with Daddy on the sofa to watch a movie. But when she didn't feel good and had to stay in bed, she made lists. I heard Daddy ask her one time what she was doing, and she said, “I'm making a list of the lists I need to make.” Mama was like that.

She made lists of what we were supposed to do after she went to heaven. Her pink and yellow and blue slips of paper covered the bulletin board in the kitchen. The first thing on Daddy's list was to put up the bird feeders before winter set in. Learning to wash the dishes was at the top of my list, but there wasn't much on Chesler's list since he was only five.

Mama could even make dishwashing fun. She would go over to the cabinet by the refrigerator, and when she'd pull on the handle to open the drawer, it sounded like one of Granny Grace's squawking guineas. Mama would laugh and squawk back, and Daddy would get up and start toward the door. “I'll get my toolbox and fix that drawer right now.” That was Daddy. He liked to fix things, but mostly he liked to make Mama smile.

Then Mama would say, “No, I like that sound. It's like the dinner bell, only when the drawer squeaks, it's time for Kate to wash the dishes.” She'd take one of Granny Grace's homemade, checkered aprons out of that drawer and tie it around me. I stood right beside her to rinse the dishes after she washed them.

Mama would sing her bath time bubble song while washing the dishes. She'd put the bubbles from the dishwater on my nose and let me put bubbles in my hand and blow them against the kitchen window.

Mama had a song about everything. If she didn't know one, she'd just make one up. And when the redbird showed up in the cedar tree outside the kitchen window, Mama made up a redbird song. When I told her my teacher said the redbird was really a cardinal, Mama said, “It's a funny thing about birds. We call a black bird a blackbird, a blue bird a bluebird, but a redbird a cardinal. Kate, I can't think of one word that rhymes with cardinal, so if it's okay with you, let's just sing about the redbird.”

When I mentioned to Mama that maybe we could get a dishwasher, she stopped washing, put down her dishrag, and pointed out the window. “Now, Kate, if there's nobody standing right here washing dishes, then that beautiful redbird in the cedar tree would have nobody to look at through the window.”

Mama liked to walk down by the creek behind our house when she felt up to it. She said she hoped we would have an early fall because she wanted to see the red and gold leaves reflecting in the creek water just one more time. One afternoon after I got home from school, Mama put on her boots and the thick wool sweater Granny knitted for her, and we walked down the path to the creek and climbed up on the big rock at the bend. Really, it wasn't quite sweater weather, but it seemed Mama was always cold.