INA'S CHRISTMAS MEMORIES, 1937 (DAY 2)

Well, let’s talk of hard time some more. There comes to me in times like these a sort of spirit of battle. I feel it as a challenge to me to outwit circumstances . . . – Ina, 1932

Ina finished tidying the kitchen after their evening meal – really just a snack since they ate their main meal at noon – and joined Jack at the dining room table to read in companionable silence for an hour or so before bed. The Aladdin lamp hanging above the table gave off plenty of light and warmth.

“We do enjoy our evening’s reading,” thought Ina to herself as she recounted the available literature. They had a lot of Geographics to read – also Collier’s, the Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, Pathfinder, Daily Chronicle, Clearwater Tribune, the M.W.A. monthly, and also the Christian Herald. In recent years, the Reader’s Digest had become a favorite. And of course, they also read the various books that came their way.

Now that Christmas was coming, Ina was looking for inspirational Christmas stories and poems. This evening, she settled on a well-worn, much-loved letter written by her older sister Ida in 1924. In the early years on this ridge, Ina’s extended family had also homesteaded here, including her parents and all of her siblings. However, they had returned to Oregon in 1903, leaving Ina and Bertha – the Dobson families – behind. Ina had felt abandoned, but it was no use to think of these things.

Instead, she turned to Ida’s letter and began to read:

I think the best time I ever had working for that especial time was that very first Christmas at Gilbert when those little evergreens inspired me to attempt another something out of nothing. I enlisted our little sister Mabel’s interests, and we put in all those long, long afternoons and evenings that otherwise would have hung heavy on our hands doing things for the little folks. 

Remember how it surprised you and Bertha and how after we had come and gone tramping through the snow, Jack had you light the lamp again and together you inspected our handiwork. I think there were some funny-shaped eats in there, too, weren’t there? Well, anyway, it pleased everyone, and the way you four Dobsons looked when we presented our trees was pay in plenty. And last but not least, you kept all those old Christmas things from the “gulch” for some time. I want to see them.

Ina put the letter down and with tears in her eyes, she pondered the lesson of that Christmas in her heart. When it came to giving, it was the thought, not the gift, that mattered.  KW