The Christmas Mirrors

Her hopes were crushed, just like the eggshells strewn across the kitchen floor. Wearily she mopped up the slimy mess with the last roll of paper towels, tears dripping off her chin. How could it have happened so quickly, she wondered to herself, after all, she had only been gone for ten minutes, dashing outside while the babies were napping to hang the diapers on the line.

And when she came back in, there the two little ones, Melanie nearly two-and-a-half, and Brittanie, a year younger, were giggling and sliding through what minutes before had been an entire flat of eggs. Five dozen eggs and her baking-breads-for-Christmas-gifts plan, ruined.

Glancing at the clock, she realized that Kelly would be home from work soon, and hungry for his lunch. On most days he had just 20 minutes to eat before heading to the university for classes. Well, today there would be no culinary masterpieces. If she hurried, she might have time to get soup and a sandwich put together. But first, she had to get the girls cleaned up.

It was mid-December, and Kelly whistled as he left the glass shop, looking forward to his lunch and a few precious minutes spent with Sue and the girls. And he was excited because today he had a surprise for them. Just this morning, a customer, appreciative of having his window repaired so promptly, had given him a $15.00 tip, and impulsively, he had stopped at the Christmas tree lot that was kitty-corner from the glass shop and bought a live tree, and a string of brightly colored lights, grinning with anticipation at how excited Sue would be to have a live tree for Christmas. He left it in a bucket of water at the shop until he could take it home that evening.

They were staying in town this year, unexpected car repairs having eaten up the money they had been saving for a trip home for Christmas. Kelly knew Sue was terribly homesick and disappointed about the missed trip home even though she put on a brave front.

Opening the door to the apartment, Kelly stopped in his tracks, the sound of three sobbing females assaulting his ears. Sue, wrestling the crying baby into a diaper, and shooting warning daggers at her towel-clad sobbing toddler looked up.

“Rough day?” he asked, scooping Melanie into his arms.

Finished with the diapering task, Sue nodded, and burst into fresh tears, gesturing at the kitchen where there were still remnants of eggshells on the floor.

All Kelly caught was, “eggs, broken, shampoo spilled, and Christmas ruined.”

Feeling rather helpless, he wrapped his arms around her and stroking her hair said, “It will be okay Cute Stuff. It will be okay.”

Hiccupping, and brushing away her tears, she said, “Today has just been kinda hard for me.”

Releasing her, Kelly said, “I wish I could stay and help you, but I can’t miss this last final.”

“I know,” Sue sighed “give me a minute to pull myself together and I’ll have soup and a sandwich ready for you.”   

While she prepared the meal, Kelly finished dressing the girls and put them down for their delayed nap. Wolfing down a bowl of soup, and grabbing the sandwich to eat on the way to his final at the university testing center, Kelly paused and pressed a kiss on Sue’s forehead.

“Do you think you can survive the afternoon? I’m so sorry about the eggs.”

Sue, nodding sighed and said, “I’ll do my best.”

That afternoon Sue spent time skimming through cookbooks looking for bread recipes that didn’t call for eggs. There was no money to replace the broken ones; she’d spent the last of the grocery money for the month already buying the flat of eggs, oranges, and a small box of chocolates for Kelly for Christmas.

After the kids woke, she helped Melanie make a Christmas countdown chain from red and green construction paper, giving scraps to Brittanie to play with. When the chain was finished, they hung it from the ceiling, and she settled them down to watch Sesame Street while she hung the three Christmas ornaments they owned in the apartment window, tacked the Christmas stockings on the wall, placed the foot-high crystal Christmas tree on a high shelf, and got out the miniature nativity set arranging it on the hope chest.

Abandoning Big Bird, Brittanie toddled over, picked up the Mary figure and popped it in her mouth. Good thing it’s kid-friendly Sue thought, and sighing, she wished for at least the hundredth time that they could go home to Idaho for Christmas.

After finishing his final, Kelly swung by the paint and glass store to pick up the Christmas tree. As he opened the door to the storeroom, the tree’s heady pine scent greeted him. Grabbing a ball of twine he tied the tree to the top of the car, picked up the box of lights, then headed home. By the time he got there, it was nearly dark.

Holding the tree with one hand, and the lights with the other, Kelly maneuvered the stairs then rang the doorbell. He could hear the girls running to the door; then it opened, and Sue was framed in the light. “Merry Christmas darlin, — girls, look what I have.”

“Oh Kelly, it’s beautiful,” Sue breathed, and suddenly life felt better than it had since the eggs had been broken that morning. While Kelly set up the tree, Sue pulled out a package of pipe cleaners and fashioned candy canes with the red and white ones.

They arranged the single strand of lights, which barely made it to the top of the tree, added the pipe-cleaner candy canes, and a tin-foil covered star for the top.  “Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree,” Melanie chanted, clapping her hands in delight, with Brittanie lisping “tree, tree” after her.

“It needs something more,” Kelly murmured, studying the tree.

“I’ll make some ornaments from baked play-dough tomorrow,” Sue said, “I have some Christmas shaped cookie cutters. Melanie can help me paint them.”

The next day Sue made mini loaves of an eggless sweet bread for Christmas gifts, glazing them with a mixture of lemon juice, water, and powdered sugar. Then while the bread was baking, she mixed up flour, salt, cornstarch, and water, into a dough to make ornaments for the Christmas tree. Letting Melanie help, she rolled out the dough and cut out stars, snowmen, stockings, Santas, and wreaths.

Placing a dry pea in the top of each to create a hole for a ribbon to go through, she smiled at Melanie’s too thick star but left it on the pan which she popped into the oven. By late afternoon, the bread loaves were wrapped and topped with bows and tags ready for delivery, and several dozen play-dough ornaments had joined the pipe-cleaner candy canes and the single strand of lights on the tree.

At the shop where he was employed, Kelly organized his work area, preparing for the day’s projects. At the end of the work table was a pile of scrap mirror, and as he was moving it to make room for his current project, he was struck with an idea.

After his regular workday ended, he called Sue and told her he would be working late, then he went back to the pile of scrap mirror, and chose the largest pieces. Working meticulously, he cut the pieces into two-inch diamond shapes and the narrower scraps into one-by-three inch rectangles. When he was finished, he had about five dozen pieces of mirror.

Turning on the grinder, he took each mirror in turn, and edge-by-edge painstakingly ground them to a smooth finish. Then he divided them into matching sets. Opening a package of paper clips, he removed one and bent it into a hook. Carefully, he glued the paper-clip hook between two mirrors placed back-to-back. He nodded, satisfied with his creation. Then he went to work on the rest of the mirror pieces. The result of his labor was a set of sparkling mirror ornaments. Leaving the ornaments to dry, he headed on home.

After a supper of baking powder biscuits (no eggs required) and gravy, they buckled the girls into their car seats, tuned into a radio station playing a Christmas-song countdown and drove around town to deliver eggless sweetbreads to friends and neighbors and to see the Christmas lights. Oooooohhhhh,  ahhhhhhh, pretty became the refrain as they came upon yet another abundantly decorated house, listening to Perry Como croon, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . .”  

Pulling into the driveway of their apartment complex, Sue couldn’t help but think that at home, far away in Idaho, Christmas lights would be blazing around the house; in contrast, their tree lights barely lit up the window. But, she consoled herself, thinking, it’s a pretty tree and it smells Christmassy.

As they each carried a sleeping child up the stairs Kelly suggested hot cocoa, and after the girls were tucked in they munched on leftover slices of the bread and drank hot cocoa, sitting in the muted light of the tree.

The next day was Sunday, and the messages all about remembering “the true meaning of Christmas” — and the question, voiced in the sermon, echoed in Sue’s mind the rest of the day, “What gift can we give to the one who has given us His all?” The answer, she thought, is our will to serve one another, and determined to give that gift to Him during the coming year.

Leaving Sue and the kids napping, Kelly drove to the glass shop to pick up the mirror ornaments. Wrapping each sparkling mirror in tissue paper, he placed them in a box. As he walked to the car, box in hand, he grinned in anticipation of Sue’s reaction to his surprise. Sue and the girls were still asleep when he reached home. Carefully and quietly he strategically placed the mirrors on the tree, the late afternoon light streaming through the window.

Early in the evening Kelly pulled out his guitar and said, “Hey Sue, can you turn on the lights to the tree and we’ll sing some Christmas songs.”

“Sure, just give me a few minutes. I’m getting the girls into their jammies,” she called from the bedroom. By the time she had wrestled them into the footed sleepers and picked up the toys scattered in their room, it was nearly dark outside.

Walking into the dimly-lit living room, the girls trailing behind her, she saw Kelly, his hands floating across the strings of his guitar, sitting next to the Christmas tree, the plaintive melody of What Child Is This filling the room, and her heart was filled with sudden gratitude for him.

Moving to the tree and kneeling down, she plugged in the cord to the lights, and Kelly’s face was suddenly illuminated in the glow of hundreds of shining reflections. Sitting back on her heels, she gasped at the tree ablaze with light.

Placing his guitar aside, Kelly held out one of the mirror ornaments, “Merry Christmas, Cute Stuff. I love you.”  And then she saw them, the mirrors, all over the tree, reflecting light, and suddenly she knew that it didn’t matter that she wasn’t “home” for Christmas, because she was seeing the true meaning of Christmas glowing in Kelly’s eyes.

*Author’s note: This story is a conflation of several events that really happened one Christmas – liberties were taken with the timing of the events to create the story.