The Christmas Dollar, Part Four

Cindy Halloran studiously rolled her snowball all around her front yard until it was big enough to make a nice round head. Steve was making the bottom roll because he was the biggest. Mikey was making the middle roll. This was going to be the best snowman in town. After they made the snowman, Daddy had promised to take them all sledding. Even the baby. Mama said it wasn't too cold if they bundled up.

"This is the bestest Christmas I ever had!" Cindy cried joyously.

"That's because you don't remember any other Christmases," said Steve. He didn't seem very happy this year. Neither did Mama or Daddy. Cindy didn't know why.

"I got a whole dollar," she reminded him.

"Big deal," said Steve.

Cindy decided not to cry. She made a snow angel instead. Then she saw a man coming down the sidewalk.

"Mr. Gruffman!" she called out happily. "Isn't this the bestest Christmas ever?"

Mr. Gruffman growled at her, but Cindy didn't mind. She liked the way his eyebrows jiggled. "I got a whole dollar! What did you get for Christmas, Mr. Gruffman?"

"Nothing!" growled Mr. Gruffman, not stopping.

Cindy stood stock still. Then she ran after Mr. Gruffman. "Nothing?!" she cried. "Why? Were you bad?"

Mr Gruffman looked at the sky. "Yes," he snapped. "I was bad! Now run along!"

Cindy couldn't believe it. Nobody could be that bad! It must be a mistake. "Wait, Mr. Gruffman! Please wait!"

Mr. Gruffman stopped and turned around. "Stay in your yard and leave me alone!" he yelled. But Cindy thought anybody might be cross if they got nothing for Christmas!

Slowly, she reached into her pocket. "Here," she said.

Mr. Gruffman just looked at her. "It's my Christmas dollar," said Cindy. "You can have it. Look - if you wiggle it, the man smiles."

Very slowly, Mr. Gruffman held out his hand. He didn't mean to take the dollar. He just wanted to see it. But while he was still staring at it, torn and taped right across Washington's face, the little Halloran girl ran back to her yard, apparently perfectly happy to give up what he suspected was her only Christmas present. He stood, frozen, and gazed after her. Pastor Jones' Christmas sermon scrolled through his mind.

Then, still in slow motion, he went to the Hallorans' house and knocked. Lou came to the door. Mr. Gruffman didn't know he was going to say it. The words just seemed to come out of his mouth. "I want to build a wing onto my house. Could you do the job?"

Hidden in his picket, his hand clung to a torn dollar bill.

The Christmas Dollar, Part Three

Joe Peterson dressed carefully and walked down the street to church. The money that nice young man had given him for Lucy's pearls crackled in his pocket.

Pastor Jones gave a good sermon about the widow's mite. "She has given all she had." It made Joe think of Lucy again. But then, everything did. He had an idea. "Pastor," he said at the door, "use this for the church for Christmas. Something special. Whatever you think."

"Well, thanks, Joe, but are you sure you can afford this?"

"Oh, yeah. It was a windfall." Joe waved it off.

In his study later, Pastor Jones looked into the envelope. It was more than he had expected. And he knew just how he wanted to use it. He got on the phone.

"Lou Halloran? Listen, could you possibly build a stable for a live nativity scene in front of the church? I'd pay you, of course."

Lou Halloran sounded suspicious. "This isn't charity, is it, Pastor?"

Pastor Jones laughed. "Are you kidding? Have you ever seen me with a hammer and nails?"

"Well, all right."

"And Lou? How about dressing up as a shepherd and playing your panpipes? People would love that!"

"I'll think about it."

Lou got off the phone feeling like a heel. He ought to be able to support his own family. The Salvation Army had even brought them a food basket, for pete's sake! He had wanted to refuse it, but the looks on his wife's and kids' faces stopped him.

Well, whatever jobs he got, he'd do right, anyway. He spent two days on the three-sided shelter for the nativity. He even let himself be talked into dressing up in a bathrobe and playing Christmas carols. His little Cindy made an adorable angel, and reveled in the thought of Daddy being a part of things.

Cindy was there when he counted the money. "Look Daddy! A funny one! I wish I had a dollar like that!"
Lou laughed. "Silly, that's a ripped one. Wouldn't you rather have a nice new dollar?"

"No, Daddy, I like that one. It makes the man look funny!"

Well, he could certainly afford to give his little girl a dollar if she wanted one! On Christmas Eve, Lou folded the dollar carefully and poked into Cindy's stocking.

Her excitement on Christmas morning would have been worthy of a million dollar bill. She jumped into his lap and hugged him, and Lou hid his wet eyes in her hair.

The Christmas Dollar, Part Two

"Merry Christmas!" Dr. Andrea Martin blew through the door of her office the next day with a cheery greeting for her new assistant, Mark Vasquez. With a new fiancee in the picture, he could use all the money he could get. That's why she was delighted with the surprise she had for him. Mark looked puzzled when she held out the envelope.
"I had an emergency call, and it made this possible. Open it."
Mark looked inside. "A Christmas bonus! I've only worked here three months!"
"And made yourself indispensable. Enjoy!"
Mark was more delighted than his employer knew. He had been saving for a really special present, and now he had enough.
He took a tattered clipping out of his pocket. "Lady's pearl necklace," it read. And the price was unbelievable. Imagine Maria's face when he gave her real pearls! He called, and to his joy, the man said he still had the necklace.
That evening Mark hurried to the address he'd been given. A bent old gentleman answered the door.
"Mr. Peterson?"
"Yes, come in."
Mark stepped into the dim house. It smelled faintly musty.
Mr. Peterson shuffled over to an old piano and took down a case from its littered top. When he opened the case, Mark felt dizzy. The two-strand necklace shone as if with its own light. A sapphire hung from it like an angel's tear.
He touched it gingerly. "Are you sure you want to sell this, and for so little?" he couldn't help asking.
Mr. Peterson looked up at a faded portrait on the piano. It showed a glowing young woman wearing the pearls. "I gave them to her for our tenth anniversary." He sighed and turned to Mark. "She can't wear them anymore. Didn't seem right to have them lying about. Some woman will love them like she did."
"My fiancee," said Mark, and something made him get out his wallet to show the old man Maria's picture.
For the first time, Mr. Peterson smiled. He looked years younger. "Lucy would like that," he said simply.
After the young man had left, visibly excited over his treasure, Joe Peterson spread out the bills on the closed piano keyboard. One of them was so tattered it ought to have been reclaimed by the bank. He looked up at the picture and smiled. "I wish we could see her face when he gives them to her, Lucy. What'll I do with this money? I don't need much anymore."
He still hadn't decided when he went to bed that night.

THE CHRISTMAS DOLLAR, Part One

Harry Gruffman muttered to himself as he strode down the sidewalk. Christmas! Something jumping or bobbing or circling in every store window. Lighted reindeer, blinking trees, garish reflections on the dirty snow and slush. A good month for storekeepers and electric companies. Gruffman turned in at the department store door, narrowly missing a squealing child and its mother. He ignored them.

In the doorway was the ubiquitous bell ringer, bundled to the ears, with a red nose and a red bucket. "Merry Christmas, sir!" chirped the young thing under the scarves, clanging busily.

Gruffman glared at her and dug in his coat pocket. "I tell you what," he barked. "I will give you this whole dollar if you never tell me merry anything again!" He brandished a tattered dollar, torn and taped across Washington's stiff grimace, stuffed it into the bucket, and stamped through the door.

"Well, if it isn't Scrooge himself!" Melissa Ware giggled and kept ringing.

That night, helping Captain Adams count the money, Melissa saw the torn dollar and laughingly told the story of the funny old man with the fierce, bushy eyebrows. The captian laughed too, but said, "Christmas isn't merry for everyone, you know."

"That reminds me," said Melissa, "I had this great idea! Coudn't we buy some stuff for the Christmas baskets from the farmers themselves? My neighbor, Mr. Yoder, still has a lot of potatoes, and he could use the money."

"Good idea, Melissa," said Captain Adams. "That way our money will help people twice."

Two days later, Captain Adams was at the Yoders' Amish farm buying potatoes and eggs. As he counted the money on the Yoders' kitchen table, he saw the torn dollar and smiled to himself. He prayed that the unknown man's charity, reluctant or not, would bring him a blessing.

Late that night, there was a crisis on the Yoder farm. Little Rachel's pony went down, and nobody knew what to do. "We've got the potato money now," said Grandmother. "And my egg money. Send Reuben for the vet, Jacob."

So Reuben galloped away to the next farm for Dr. Andrea Martin. An hour later, Rachel had tears of gratitude in her eyes. Lightning was much better, and Dr. Martin said he would be fine.

The veterinarian didn't charge the Yoders her full fee. She knew they had it rough right now. But as she drove away in her old truck, she was grateful for the extra money. It meant she could do something she had feared she would not be able to manage this year.

She didn't even notice one tattered dollar.

Grief

Grief, I've decided, is like a giant fun house. Not fun, at all, just full of traps.
You're walking along and suddenly everything goes all stretchy and distorted, like one of those nightmares where sound becomes something from a monster movie and movement is no longer subject to the laws of time and space.
Oh, right, you realize. It's one of those wavy mirrors, that's all. Maybe an amplifier with all its knobs turned all the way up. You try to wake up, can't, and discover
this is no nightmare.

This is real.
She's really gone. She's really not coming back.

You clamp your hands over your ears to hide from the screams, but it doesn't work because they're coming from inside you.
So you bend every muscle to dragging your legs through the quicksand that seems to be holding them, and finally you can inch your way out of that particular section of the fun house.
For two minutes, you're better.

Then something jumps out and shrieks at you, and your heart tries to escape its cage of ribs. You throw your arms over your head, crying like a baby, but there's no Mama to comfort you, so the crying just goes on.
When it finally stops, you try to lift your head, which now weighs 200 pounds, mop up your face, and make a teeth-gritted dash through the first door you see.

Hurrah! You're on the porch! Out! There's sunshine! You take a deep breath
and your lungs seize up like an old car engine running without oil.
It was an illusion. You're not on the porch. There is no porch. There is no sunshine. It's the reflection of the flames, coming closer, coming to consume you.

I am not sure how long this goes on. Great loss first flung me into this sub-quantum Dali landscape almost a year ago. I thought I was getting close to the back door. I thought all I had to pass was the claustrophobic hallway, where the walls squeeze you until you can't breathe. And maybe the tightrope over the broken glass. I thought I would be out soon.

Wrong.
 There was a sudden atomic explosion and I time-warped right back to the beginning. Here we go again. Familiarity is not a help. It increases the horror. I know what's around that bend.

I'm not going. You can't make me.

Okay, Just One. Or Two.

Had to show you Captain Poly of the Miss Poly, best and cleanest glass-bottomed boat in the Caribbean. And just a couple of blurry coral pix. . .Cool huh? You just WISH you'd been there!

Good-bye, Jamaica, how can you survive without us?!

More Good-bye

A view of the beach, and our Fearless Leader, still leaning forward on high alert even in her beach chair. She kept counting people. "Has anyone seen Hamrick?" (The correct answer, of course, was "Hamrick who?")

Montego Bay

What can I say? I have pictures of every room of the two bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, full kitchen, dining room, living room and seaview balcony hotel suite! Which put up 4-5 of us and cost something in the neighborhood of US$60-80!! I have a jillion pix of turquoise waves, and a jillion more of blurry coral taken through the glass-bottomed boat. The bottom line is, we had a blast on that last day! Some snorkeled for hours, breathless with excitement about eels and puffers and brain coral and sea fans. Some swam and floated and sunned. Some sat in beach chairs or dozed on towels. Six of us went on a memorable glass-bottomed boat tour. It wasn't ALL work in Jamaica! Oh, and that awesome view is the bay, showing the dark coral reefs, as seen from the pedestrian walkway from our hotel to the beach access.

Good-bye

Eventually, as fires do, the bonfire burned low. For the last time, we went to bed in our bunks, all packed up for the trip to Montego Bay.

Our Last Night On the CSI Farm, Part Two

There's something about sitting quietly together around a fire, watching sparks fly up into a darkening sky, Orion and the Big Dipper swinging silently by overhead. We debated mildly about whether those two planets that have been hanging together for weeks now are Venus and Mars, Venus and Jupiter, some other thing entirely? (Does anybody actually know? Inquiring minds would love the true answer!)

We talked about what we'd seen, what we'd learned, what we'd done or wished we had done. We laughed or amened or maybe got a little tearful, as seemed called for.

We talked of coming back. But ultimately, we said good-bye. And thank you. They thanked us, but I do believe we were blessed more.

Our Last Night On the CSI Farm, Part One

They have a really awesome fire pit, all lined with big stones, and someone, I don't know who, had prepared a really Boy Scoutly teepee bonfire. After supper on Friday, we were sent out, carrying our chairs, to sit by the brightly burning fire and to answer, each for ourselves, two brightly burning questions:

What did the week mean to you?

What are you going to do about it?

Last Night at the CSI Farm

They have a really awesome fire pit, all lined with big stones, and someone, I don't know who, had prepared a really Boy Scoutly teepee bonfire. After supper on Friday, we were sent out, carrying our chairs, to sit by the brightly burning fire and to answer, each for ourselves, two brightly burning questions:

What did the week mean to you?

What are you going to do about it?

For Our Sins, Work on the Hard Rock Pile!

I forgot to show you what we did instead of finishing the greenhouse. Actually, there were several jobs passed around. I'm not sure what all of them were. Some had to start digging a new foundation hole next to this house, but I don't have pictures, more's the pity, of them slaving to dig out the most amazingly heavy clay you ever tried to muck out of the ground! Chris McKenzie said it well: "This stuff is glue!"

Several of us, though, were set to moving this pile of gravel inside the house and spreading it around evenly, in preparation for pouring concrete floors. It involved wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load of gravel, many cooperative shovels, a square shovel (and boots) for shoving it all around neatly inside, and more muscle and sweat than we thought we had left at the end of the week!

Cameron's Turmeric

Last but not least, one of several bags of turmeric, which we thought looked like large grubs!

Cameron's Turmeric

Last but not least, a bag of turmeric roots, which we thought looked kind of like large grubs!

Cameron's Scotch Bonnet Peppers

Here is a picture of one of his pepper fields, and a close-up of a pepper. It's not quite mature yet--it will have the look of a Scotch bonnet, kind of like a miniature Turk's Turban squash, if you know what that looks like. (Having trouble with uploading pictures.)

Cameron's Cocoa Tree

Here is a picture of a cocoa tree (more properly a Cacao tree). You can see the pods hanging directly off the trunk and branches. Yellow is good, black is bad, and you can also see rat holes if you look closely.

Cameron's Cocoa Tree

Here is a picture of a cocoa tree (more properly a Cacao tree). You can see the pods hanging directly off the trunk and branches. Yellow is good, black is bad, and you can also see rat holes.

Cameron's Farm

Cameron is a young man who lives nearby and is a friend of CSI. He was educated in the states and has gone back home to Jamaica to try to revive his old family farm and give employment to as many people in his economically depressed parish as possible. We were all pretty much awestruck at all he's accomplished already. His main products so far are little yellow Scotch Bonnet peppers (innocent-looking--don't trust them!HOT!!!), and turmeric, the things in the white bag that look kind of like large grubs. He also has a "cocoa walk" (what you call a plantation of cocoa trees) but has trouble with rot, which blackens the pods, rats, which eat into them, and the need of processing. He said at one point you were required to sell all your cocoa powder only to the government, for $8/lb, and they turned around and resold it for $64. Now, if he can build his own processing building, which sounds fairly doable, he can employ more workers and sell the powder for more. (I told him I'd buy it!)

This is a picture of Cameron's farmhouse.

Cameron's Farm

One of the men who came to visit was Cameron, who was educated in the states and has come back to Jamaica to revive his family's farm and do his best to employ some people and help his economically depressed parish. The work he is doing left us all pretty awestruck, and he was like a sponge when it came to any new information and ideas we could offer for ways to create value-added products that will help him to be as financially stable as possible. He took us on a tour of his farm, where his main products at the moment are Scotch Bonnet peppers (HOT!!) and turmeric. He has an old "cocoa walk" (what you call a plantation of cocoa trees) but has trouble with rats eating the pods, which is why you see the black. You can also see holes chewed in. He can't poison rats and also stay organic, so that's something he's researching.

More Greenhouse Progress

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this. Here are some pictures of the greenhouse as near complete as we got it. We were unable to completely finish it, because parts for the gutters didn't arrive in time. So our crew chief, Patrick, gave us different work to do, which will be the subject of the next post.

The first picture shows half the plastic up--that's the bit that was put up in the wind a couple of posts ago.

The others show views from inside and outside, once the plastic is on both halves of the roof. You can see the open area between the two roof sides. One side is wider (which is why the plastic wouldn't reach) and overhangs the other to protect from rain inside, but there is an area about 2" wide that's left open for ventilation.

I should add that I don't know why there's a second copy of one of the pictures, nicely done in blue! Apparently I can't delete just one picture, which seems stupid, but what do I know?

More Greenhouse Progress

Sorry it's taken me awhile to get back to this! Here are some more pictures of the almost-completed greenhouse. We couldn't completely finish it, since the parts needed for gutters didn't arrive in time. So they gave us other work to do, which will be the subject of the next post.

Pretty Stuff

Greenhouse Progress

By Wednesday the frame was complete on the greenhouse, and we began to put up the plastic. It was windy, with some fairly powerful gusts. Unfortunately I missed the shot when the plastic, having been pulled all the way along the top, billowed up and tried to act as a sail to take the entire island on a Caribbean cruise, but you can see where the plastic is pushing against the ladder in this picture.

Once it was pulled carefully all the way along the top, it turned out to be too narrow, much to everyone's disappointment. (It was donated, and you can't look a gift horse in the mouth.) Unlike us impatient Americans, the Jamaicans simply shrugged and said, "Throw it down and turn it--we'll put it crosswise instead."

Appropriate Technology

Here's a handy-dandy hand-washing station for those who want to save water. I'm not sure if Deborah designed this herself, but at any rate, she's the one who shared the design with us. The jug is filled with water, and there are a few small holes high in its side. A string is tied from the handle of the jug to a stick. When not in use, the stick is propped up against the post. When you want to wash your hands, you put the stick down, put your foot on it, and it tips the jug so that water comes out of the holes like a little faucet. Below is a dug-out area filled with gravel, so it doesn't get muddy. This same area acts as an entry way to the existing greenhouse.

Deborah and I washed our muddy hands in just a few trickles of water. It worked great!

Catching Up

Sorry! I haven't been able to keep you updated for the past couple of days. Whenever I wasn't too busy, the internet was unstable.

So here are several short entries again.

First of all, a very important subject--Pinto, our cook, making her famous Jamaican fried chicken! You poor, poor things, not to be here!! As you can see, several of us were taking pictures at once. That's so we had evidence the chicken, rice and beans, vegetables, etc. really did exist. . . though they did disappear uncannily fast!

Randall in the roots, Randall and Debbonnaire in one of the giant "rooms" or "hallways" in the roots, and a picture that gives a better idea how truly enormous this thing is! Note the miniature people in the lower left corner of the picture, and realize that they are closer to you than the tree is.

The Big Fig Tree

The Big Tree is too big to get into one picture, so here are some of the bottom and some of the top. You really can't get the scale of this thing, but I will post a couple more that I think give the impression better. The picture at the bottom actually happened first--it's a view of us heading down the steep jungly path to head for The Big Tree.

Going to Church

Randall and his two beautiful little daughters.

The church we attended--this picture was taken after the service had ended.

Past Pictures--The Cool Spot

I have some pictures uploaded now, which go with earlier blogs. But since I can't figure out how to add them in the text where I want them, I'm just going to add them in their own mini blog entries.

First, here are some from The Cool Spot, where we stopped for dinner on our way from the airport to the CSI guesthouse.