Grandpère by Janet Romain Page A

take their outside clothes off and give them cookies.
    “It’s just like the four-wheeler. It’s fun to ride and it goes fast,” I tell Pierre, thinking of how much he loves the four-wheel bike.
    “Too loud,” he says, putting his little hands over his ears.
    We watch through the window. The men have piled all five kids on the car hood that Lorne called his sleigh, and Parker and his brothers are taking turns pulling them around. Lorne used it to get firewood in the winter, but it seems to work fairly well as a sled bus too. We watch Parker take Grandpère for a gentle circle around the yard, sitting behind him on the snowmobile, then he brings him right up to the door, where he crawls off and doffs his hat. He reaches out and shakes Parker’s hand.
    Jessica comes over to look out and realizes that Aaron has a cookie. She snatches it away, ready to rant at him or me, so I tell her I made the cookies with buckwheat flour; Aaron can have it. He gives me a grateful look, and I am almost not sorry I lied about the flour. How can a tablespoon of wheat flour hurt a kid one way or the other? Then I realize it has milk in it too. Two sins in one cookie. I warn myself to keep an eye on him for a couple of hours to make sure he doesn’t swell up or get sick. It’s a good thing I keep allergy medicine in the cupboard.
    After the busy day we all have a fairly early night, letting all seven boys line up their sleeping bags by the tree. When Aaron sees where the boys are sleeping, he wants to sleep there too. Jessica puts diaper underwear under his pajamas. I ask her if he still wets the bed. She says he doesn’t, it’s just a precaution. Poor kid; he’s going to have issues with trust.
    Christmas Day is one of those perfect winter days when the sun is bright and the reflection on the snow sets a million sparkles to shining. It’s just below freezing with no wind. After the gift unwrapping mayhem in the morning, we take everyone outside. Even Seth rides in a backpack on Clint’s shoulders.
    Grandpère thinks this is especially funny and calls him Papoose Man. I asked him if he never packed his own kids, for he had my four uncles and my mother.
    “Never. Never. If a man packed a papoose like that, he might get called a papoose man. You can put down the baby, but maybe you have to carry that name forever. Your grandmother carried our babies.”
    We look at each other. So many people are gone from our world, yet here out in this yard are all these new people, exuberant and excited, growing toward their own futures. I feel so much love for all of them, and a contentment with life overwhelms me. I say a silent thank you to the universe for this life of ease and luxury.

    Boxing Day brings Darcy and Faith with their girls Sarah and Tammy. I don’t see them so much now because they live up in Dawson Creek, but when the girls were young, they lived with us for three years after the car crash. Time has lifted the sting out of my daughter’s death, but there is still a grief pang in my heart that misses her so much. Sarah and Tammy help fill that hole; Tammy is so like her mom in looks, and Sarah is so like her in nature. They call me Anzel. I taught them to do that when they were young, for I couldn’t bear it when they called me Mom. When Darcy told us he was going to marry Faith, all I could think was that I was losing my girls, but when I met her and grew to love her gentle nature, I was glad for them all.
    The girls rush in, hugging everyone and passing out gifts all around. They’ve brought Grandpère a pair of moccasins; the tops are beaded solid with seed beads, and the toes have concentric rows of circles in a beautiful design. They explain that they went to the museum and saw ones like them, but they had to buy slippers and sew the tops on, or else they might have been the ugliest moccasins ever. And, they point out, the slippers have a nice grippy sole.
    Grandpère puts them on and does a few fancy, but slow, jig steps.