The Christmas Portrait (24 page)

Daddy opened up his Bible and started to read from the Book of Luke just like Grandpa used to do. While he was reading, I wondered if they had Christmas trees and presents in heaven, and if Mama and Grandpa were sitting around a great big tree like we were this morning. When Daddy finished reading, Uncle Don prayed. I took one more picture with everybody's eyes closed. I wanted to remember this.

It was time for presents. Daddy said, “Chesler, now that you can read a little bit, it's going to be your first Christmas to hand out the presents. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir.” Chesler shouted each name real loud like they wouldn't know it was their present if he didn't. He hurried to pass them out so he could start opening the boxes with his name on them.

Christmas wrappings started flying again, and Aunt Susannah Hope was off the sofa and grabbing the Christmas paper as it flew and gathering it up off the floor, but Daddy stopped her. I knew why. Mama liked to see the room covered in paper.

Aunt Lisa did what she promised. She framed and wrapped the sketches of Mama I made for Granny and my aunt. They both had a good cry when they saw the pictures I drew.

Daddy bragged on the fish tray I made him just like Aunt Lisa said he would. Everybody had their laps full of boxes, and the floor was knee-deep in Christmas paper, just like Mama would like it. No more gifts under the tree, and I thought it was time to get ready for church, but Aunt Susannah Hope pulled out two more huge presents from somewhere. Everybody got real quiet again.

She handed one to Chesler and one to me. Her voice sounded like she was going to cry, and I didn't want to look at her. “This is something your mama wanted you to have. She started it before she went to heaven, and Granny Grace and I finished it so you could have it for Christmas.”

Chesler tore into his box like somebody might take it away him, but I opened mine real careful like, not ripping the tissue. Chesler spread his out all over the floor before I could pull out my very own patchwork quilt. There were pieces of Mama's pink dress and her favorite blouse with the roses and pieces of my clothes I had outgrown. Granny Grace said it was a memory quilt of Mama's things and some of our own clothes, even our christening gowns, and they were all stitched together with love just like we were. I held it to my face. It smelled like Mama.

Granny Grace said, “Look in the bottom of the box, Katy. Your mama wanted you to have this too.”

There was a small, pink satin bag with a white ribbon drawstring and a card. I opened the bag first. It was a lock of Mama's red hair tied with more white ribbon. My heart stopped. Mama and I had thought of the exact same Christmas present! I was thinking like Mama, just like Mr. Josh said I would when I grew up. Now a part of Mama would be with me forever too.

The card was in Mama's curlicue handwriting.

I put the card and the lock of Mama's hair back in the bag and ran my hand over the quilt. Then I saw the redbird, the one she had stitched by hand with silk thread on a large white square right in the middle. Mama thought of everything. Christmas didn't go to heaven when she did.

Before we left for church, I went upstairs and spread my quilt on top of my bed. From now on Mama would be all around me. The matchbook I found in my pocket this morning, the one with Haven of Hope on it, was lying on my desk. I took the pink satin bag with Mama's lock of hair in it and opened it. The perfect place for my new treasures. I stuck the matchbook right next to Mama's curl and pulled the drawstring shut and put the bag under my pillow.

Christmas was different now that Mama and Grandpa were in heaven, but today was a good day. After we read the Christmas story and opened our presents, we all scrunched up and drove to church together in Uncle Don's van, with Chesler singing at the top of his lungs, “All Is Well.” I liked it that Christmas this year came on a Sunday. It just fit the day somehow.

Laramie and her mom and dad met us at church and sat with our family on the third pew. She and her mom held hands the whole time. So did Uncle Luke and Aunt Lisa.

Daddy sat between Chesler and me, and Granny sat next to Aunt Susannah Hope and patted her leg about fifty times.

Miss Evie was there too. I got to tell her about my new camera. She said she wanted to come see it.

It was hard to listen to Pastor Simmons because all I could think about was last night and being locked in the church. But the best part was giving Mama her present and getting a lock of hair in that silk bag.

Laramie and her parents followed us home after the service. Granny was right about the lunch. It was the most food we'd seen on that old dining room table since Thanksgiving. The only thing was Aunt Susannah Hope had to run down the hall when Granny told her there were oysters in the dressing. Granny said she'd be like that for a few more weeks, then she would feel better than she'd ever felt in her life until the baby came.

After all the eating and laughing and storytelling, everybody went home. The house was quiet again, but a different kind of quiet—like Mama used to like. The kind of quiet that says it's been a good day and all is well.

I guess Mama was right when she told me life goes on, like the stream always heading somewhere. Sure seemed that way. Uncle Luke was getting married. My aunt was having a baby when she didn't think she could. Laramie was my new best friend. Chesler was growing up a little bit at a time, and Daddy was settling in to taking care of me and Chesler without Mama's help.

And me, I was growing up too. I'd be taking my own pictures and making my own Books of My Life from now on and Chesler's too, just like Mama wanted me to.

I dressed for bed and hung up my Christmas clothes. Tonight would be my first night under the quilt Mama made me. I went to sleep with my pink satin bag in my hand.

The next morning Daddy made good on his promise to take my first roll of film to the one-hour photo counter at the drugstore. We hung around the store, buying a few things on Christmas clearance and waiting for the photos. Then we picked up Laramie. She was going to stay with us so her mom and dad could have some time to talk.

When we finally got back home, I practically dragged Laramie up the stairs to my room 'cause I couldn't wait to tell her how my plan worked. I threw the packet of photos on my bed and said, “I have to show you something.” She picked up the envelope of photos while I fished under my pillow for my treasure bag. I told her everything that happened and showed her the green matchbook.

“I believed you even without the matches.” Laramie sat on the bed and opened the envelope and looked at the first picture.

I was just about to say something when she jerked her head around, her eyes beaming. She looked straight at me and smiled just like she did when her mom walked through the front door on Christmas Eve.

“What is it, Laramie?” She handed the photo to me. “Here, Kate, you're not going to believe this.” Then she smiled.

My first photograph. There they were—Daddy, Uncle Luke, and Chesler, sitting on the floor by the Christmas tree right by the window. And there I was, my own reflection in the mirror across the room, camera in front of my face.

“Do you see it? The redbird?”

I held the picture closer and stared at it. Then I saw it, the redbird with her head cocked just so and sitting on the window ledge looking in just like she belonged there.

Laramie was right—I couldn't believe it. I was in my very first photograph, and so was the redbird. A real family Christmas portrait.

E
PILOGUE

W
HILE WE WAITED
on her mother, Marla sat on the sofa in the foyer of my office and finished telling me about her conversation with Mr. Josh. “Why does he have all those colors on him?” She pointed back to the picture.

“Because that's the way I like to think about him.”

“He looks like he got caught in a rainbow.”

I chuckled. “Perhaps he did.”

“But it's dark all around him. How can you have a rainbow in the dark?”

“Marla, you ask the best questions.”

The clanging bell indicated someone had opened the front door. Marla turned to see. “It's Mama.” She jumped up and ran toward the door. “Bye, Dr. Kate. See you next year. Oh, and merry Christmas.”

She was halfway out the door to meet her mother when I managed a “Merry Christmas to you too, Marla.” I watched Marla hug her mother. Silhouetted against the late December afternoon sky dotted with Christmas lights, they walked hand in hand across the street to their car.

I turned to the quilt hanging on the wall behind me and ran my fingers over the silk thread outlining the redbird. Then I glanced at the Christmas photo hanging next to the quilt—my first photograph, the one I took on that first Christmas morning after Mama went to heaven. I pondered that day for a few more moments before locking the door and turning out the front lights. I'd be in Cedar Falls this time tomorrow afternoon, joining my family for Christmas again.

Eighteen years had passed since that first Christmas portrait. Life changed when Mama died, and sometimes, I wondered how things might have been if she were still with us. She left too soon, but she left us with so much.

Granny Grace loved every day at her farm, continued singing in the choir, chased more guineas, and passed out orders to all the family until age eighty-four. She went to sleep one April evening and woke up in her heavenly mansion, built with only God knows how many blueberry pies and Japanese fruitcakes and other acts of kindness.

Aunt Susannah Hope and Uncle Don still live in the white Victorian with the wrap-around porch and picket fence. Somehow my aunt's attacks of breathlessness went away after she had two children. Uncle Don still runs his accounting business when he isn't painting windowsills or following up on Aunt Susannah Hope's honey-do list. Hank, their first, is a college freshman studying architecture, and Gracie is still in high school. Gracie has Mama's red hair.

Uncle Luke and Aunt Lisa married, and he set up his family practice in Cedar Falls. They bought Granny's farm and added practically another house onto that log cabin. And now their three children fish in the pond where Uncle Luke proposed to Aunt Lisa.

Chesler. He is in school to be a veterinarian. He spent the last three summers working on a dude ranch in Colorado and singing tenor with a cowboy quartet for nightly entertainment at the chuckwagon dinners. Daddy said Chesler was going to be a singing cowboy vet.

And Daddy. Well, Daddy became Uncle Luke's physician's assistant, and he is still taking care of people. Evie, Pastor Simmons's sister, moved to Cedar Falls shortly after the Christmas we met her and set up her studio and gallery there. It was small but successful. Two years later Daddy married Evie. I was the twelve-year-old maid of honor at their wedding and Chesler sang. Evie taught me so much about cameras and how to see things, really see things, and she made Daddy happy again. I still take trips with them a couple times a year. Daddy follows us to all kinds of exotic places and carries our camera equipment. Evie and I are collaborating on a book, a coffee table collection of happy faces from around the world. Mama would be proud.

Laramie and I are still friends. Although we don't get to see each other as much as we'd like, we chat often. She and her parents moved back East to be with her grandparents when Laramie was fifteen, so we didn't graduate together, but she's done well. She's married, lives in Richmond, Virginia, and is the buyer of women's fashions for a large department store chain. She will meet me in Cedar Falls in June for the wedding.

And me? Well, little Kate now hangs out her shingle as Dr. Katherine Joy Harding, a licensed counselor and art therapist in Chicago. I still have the first camera I got for Christmas the year Mama went to heaven, and I am working on the next book of my life. Daddy, Chesler, and Uncle Luke are relieved that I'll become Mrs. Henry Beckenworth this summer. Henry's a social worker I met at a conference two years ago, and one day we'd like to go back to Appalachia, near my family, and do our work there. I wear his grandmother's engagement ring on my finger, a family heirloom and my newest treasure.

I still value the old treasures though, like my box of Christmas ornaments, and the note Mama wrote to her fifth-grade boyfriend, which is now stuck with chewing gum to the bottom of my office desk drawer, and the pink satin bag with the lock of Mama's hair and the mysterious Haven of Hope matchbook. I try to do the things Mama taught me—to be kind to others, kind enough to make them smile. I try to be good to myself and aware of the wonders that others miss.

Most of my practice involves grieving children, and it seems that Mr. Josh, the mysterious one who comes when children need him most, is still moving around just like he told me he does. I find myself looking for him, and I think I might have caught a couple glimpses of him since that Christmas of my tenth year, but the children who come to me often tell me of their conversations with him. He doesn't always tell them his name, perhaps because they don't ask. Oh, he dresses differently, and most children don't see him the way I painted him in a rainbow of colors, but his caring eyes and his gentle words are still the same. He shows up at parks, in hospitals, in churches, and all kinds of surprising places. One of these days I'll have my camera ready.