DECEMBER 4 -- CHRISTMAS PAST

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Long Past?" Inquired Scrooge. 

"No, Your past. Rise and walk with me!"

In 1934 (by way of 2013), it was cold at Gilbert -- the high in the teens and the overnight low predicted to be +5. Jack kept one of his barn lanterns in the cellar and Ina was grateful that none of the perishables had frozen.

Jack also corked the front door and closed off the living room so that they might have warmer quarters in the kitchen and dining room. Ina wanted to protest that as she loved to sit before the blazing fire of a long winter's evening, but she knew in her heart that Jack was right.

Instead, this evening found Ina sitting in the comfortable rocking chair by the dining room window, her feet up on the footstool. She was reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – or was she? Her head was bowed, and just looking at her it was difficult to know if she were awake or asleep.

A sharp rap roused her. What was that? No one ever called at this lonely place of an evening.Then a specter began to form before her eyes, which she recognized at once as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Whatever he wanted, Ina was prepared to meet it. Her family had experienced joys and heartaches in this place, but she was at peace with life. Ina had nothing to fear from the past and welcomed this kindly presence into her  heart.

“Which Christmas do you wish to show me?” she asked the Ghost. She received no answer in words but a childhood Christmas she barely remembered came to mind.

“Let me review it through Idy’s letter,” said Ina, and the Ghost nodded approval. She pulled a thick packet of paper from her pocket and carefully unfolded the long letter written by her eldest sister, Ida Jane:

“No, I think I’ve never had a Christmas that someone didn’t remember me,” Ida wrote, “ – even if t’was only a small gift, the love that prompted it was big. I’ll never forget one Christmas in old Iowa when all our little Ma had for her expectant brood was a 10-cent package of candy divided between and given out wrapped up in newspaper. We sat on Pa’s tool chest like so many hungry crows and I tried not to see “the hurt” in Ma’s face and to keep out of my own all I could for her sake, too. I think I was 11 years old. [If Ida was 11, Ina was about 5.] But do as we could it was not Christmas, but God put it into the heart of Charley Wiley to ‘save the day’ by slipping in on us with a big breezy ‘Merry Christmas’ and giving me that wonderful candy apple and something in candy of smaller fruit to you girls, too. My, didn’t our spirits come up, tho and the happy relieved look on Ma’s face alone would have repaid him did he only know the whole circumstance.”

Ina brushed a tear from her eye and paused to reflect on that Christmas of long ago. She suspected that Charley Wiley did know “the whole circumstance” -- that unless someone helped, there would be no Christmas for those little children.

“Ina, are you awake? It’s time to go to bed.” Jack shook her firmly but gently and Ina realized she must have dozed off. Glancing around the room for the ghost, she came to realize she had been dreaming. But -- Ida’s letter was still open in her lap. KW