Family Christmas

by Anne Wilkins

I’m hanging Great Aunty Jane on our tree by one pipe cleaner leg, while my sister Daisy places Great Uncle Richard.

“Careful with those ones,” Mama warns. “They’ve always been a bit flimsy.”

“They shoulda taken more care,” Daisy says.

Great Uncle Richard is just an old wooden clothes peg, the kind you hang out on the washing line, but with sticks for arms and legs. Every Christmas we end up hot-gluing those legs and arms back on, as they’re always falling off. There’s only a tuft of his hair left, but Mama says that don’t matter so much, as he was half-bald anyway. Great Aunty Jane is only slightly better; she’s an old piece of dowelling with small holes drilled into her body for where her pipe cleaner arms and legs fit. Those pipe cleaners are so worn through that you can see the metal, but Mama says that’s how Aunty made her, so that’s how she’ll stay. I’m also thinking Aunty must have been half-blind when she made her decoration because the bright red lips she painted on are huge.

“Some people don’t spend much time on their decoration,” Mama reminds us. “They ain’t got time or they don’t like to think of dying. Sometimes people gotta finish it for them.” (Continue Reading…)