Gracie

I have a niece named Grace. She is a little over two years old. The last time I saw her she was one and she could say my name. She could say ‘Jack’ and she tried to say ‘Nathan’. Grace was funny...the sort of funny when you can tell someone is eventually going to be a gas to be around.

This Christmas will probably be the first time she really gets excited about presents and stuff. Most two year olds know about Santa, get trained to say ‘Ho Ho Ho – Merry Christmas!’ and all that. Hopefully someone will take her to see a good Mall Santa, one of the ones with a quiet voice and excellent candy canes. I don’t know if she’ll cry or be nervous, it’s always tough to tell when they’re that age. It’s possible she’ll be really confident, waddle on up to Santa bold as brass. My brother and sister-in-law will treat her well for Christmas – I don’t know much about them any more but that’s a given. They’ll be generous with her. They’ll love her and make sure she is happy. My other brother will probably get her something cute, like a nice teddy bear and an outfit. Maybe a Webkinz. I wonder if he’ll get the salesgirl to help him pick out her little outfit...on Christmas day they’ll probably all laugh together about that. How he always manages to get the pretty girls to give him a hand picking a present. Grace might be big enough now that he’ll have stopped being nervous around her the way most guys without kids are around babies. I bet she’s sturdy enough that he’ll roughhouse with her, the same way he did with my boys when they were small.

Grace lives in a big beautiful house. It will be full of people at Christmas if I know anything about my brother. His in-laws, our brother. His dad and his stepmom. Maybe a few friends who have little ones Gracie’s age. There will be a big table set up in their dining room with a perfect, stylish centrepiece like a bowl of golden pears or a perfect poinsettia. My sister-in-law is an exceptional cook if memory serves so dinner will be really good. The men might sit around and drink some good scotch after dinner, the women all separate in the other room but not in a terrible way. In a way that feels as natural and right as breathing. Grace will have a bath at the end of the day and might toddle in to see the men, her hair wet and her pj’s warm from the dryer. If she does I bet she’ll crawl into my brother’s lap and fall asleep, her cheek against his chest so she can hear the deep rumble of his man’s voice. She will feel safe.

Next year she will be three years old. If I know her by then, I might ask to take her for the weekend. The boys and I will bake cookies with her and she could wear a little apron. We might go see some sort of Christmas movie if there is one playing. A Disney movie if her parents say it’s ok. By next year, it might all be ok.

But for now – my mom and dad will spend Christmas in California with friends. The boys and I will go tobogganing with our usual group on Christmas Eve and spend Christmas day in our pyjamas eating turkey. Our routine that we mostly love. My mom will be sure to remember all of us on Christmas day and will tell stories about what it was like when we were kids. How we made snowmen together and watched the same movies every year. How my youngest brother decorated the house one year as a surprise. How I made us each our own gingerbread cookie with our names on it, my brother’s cookies wore little bowties. How my other brother would get up at the crack of dawn on Christmas every year without complaint even though he is really a night person.

How we weren’t always separate little clusters of families. How we weren’t always fractured little bits of people.

Because she remembers who we used to be. So that some day, when all of this is over, she can remind us how to be us again.