The Twelve Years of Christmas: 1984—1995: the Hotly Contested Memoirs of a Slightly Sub-Normal, Rural Family Through the Use and Abuse of Those Dreaded Form Letters

By Rochelle Doan Craig

The Twelve Years of Christmas is not just a Christmas story. Its a journal of the first twelve years of one familys past events, happily recounted to all in those dreaded, ghastly annual Christmas form letters. Newlyweds Rochelle and Tom Craig moved to a farm in a friendly rural community to raise a crop of children. The family traveled and camped as often as Tom could be dragged away for it.

After seventeen years of child-rearing, Rochelle returned to part-time elementary school teaching. She soon switched to full-time teaching with numerous grades and totally new subjects. Shortly thereafter, she began the dreaded Christmas card form letters, a practice that she mocks in The Twelve Years of Christmas.

The letters cover the years between 1984 and 1995, explaining the changes in the lives of the Craig family and their pets. Rochelle also discusses the familys love of travel and the ever present threat of marital collapse, mostly due to the annual family practice of putting up the winter window-insulating film, the Christmas tree, and the snow fence together.

This version of rural family life describes the fortunes (few), misfortunes (many), ups, downs, and in-betweens of each yearall tied up with lots of love and good humor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450274579

Rochelle Doan Craig

Rochelle Doan Craig is an unrecognized artist; a much-maligned, burned-out, and retired high school and elementary school teacher; and a tough-love mother of six. She lives with her husband, Tom, and their pets on their cliff-top Lake Erie farm in the southernmost area of Canada.

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Rochelle Craig

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4502-7455-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-7456-2 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-7457-9 (ebook)

iUniverse rev. date: 12/08/2010

Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

EPIGRAPH

MUCH ADO ABOUT ME

& A BIT ABOUT TOM

OUR CHILDREN

1984

FORM-LETTERS, CLASS HORRORS

& ACCIDENTS

1985

TEENS, TWENTY-SOMETHINGS, TRIPS & TEACHING

CHRISTMAS 1985

1986

TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE FALL

& THE PEGTOWN BOAT PEOPLE

1987

FOUR TRIPS & ONE WEDDING

1988

Country Life Past and Present,

A Wedding and A Birth

1989

One Passing & Multiple Personality Disorders

1990

One Wedding And a Few Fruitcake Favours

1991

TWO BIRTHS & BRITAIN

1992

TIPPECANOE AND

APPLE PIES TOO

1993

Burn, Baby, Burn!

Dan, Dan the Psychic Man & Babies

1994

The Little Ones Grow Up & The Big Ones Go Down Under and Dan Again

1995

Our Operations, Five Down—One to Go!

DEDICATION

WITH GREAT THANXX TO: ALL of our children whose lives made this book possible; TO those who encouraged me to write, no matter what sensible people said; TO Brent Shanks, computer and equipment damage-repair expert extraordinaire; TO my beleaguered but faithful, personal physician, Dr. Stephen N. McCoy, who brought my blood pressure down below 242/111 to prevent me from stroking out, and who kept me just barely, sane enough (debatable), to write this book; TO my dear husband Tom for his patience—or as much patience as a Type A+++ could hope to have— during my volatile and moody fits of writing and fighting with him and all things electronic; and TO my parents, the late Jack and Pauline (Scott) Doan who made me possible. RDC

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

WITH MANY THANXX: TO my pack-ratting friends and family who had, strangely enough, saved old copies of our Christmas Form-Letters and sent them back to refresh my memory while writing this book—at least I think that’s why they sent the letters back; TO Tracey who talked me back from the edge when it was either going to be me or the typewriter/computer/printer being hurled off the cliff; TO Robinson Motorcycles for photocopying my form-letters for so many years; TO Marty Gervais, my Editing Course prof for suggesting this title; TO our daughter Monique for giving me the book The Artist’s Way; TO my excellent, yet strict reader, daughter Renee who spent her holiday weeks suggesting deletions; To my Toronto editor Pam Watts; To my volunteer Wheatley Journal proof-reader Allison Siddall: and TO two other people that I can’t think of at the moment. If you believe that one of those two might be You—just keep that thought. RDC

INTRODUCTION

NOTE: The names of most of the next-of-kin characters have been changed for three reasons: To confuse you readers who are pretty sure that you know them; To protect them from stalkers (readers) accosting them on the street demanding, Double My Money Back!; And to protect myself from frivolous lawsuits by our children whose recollections may differ from mine or whose escapades have not yet officially cleared ‘the Statute of Limitations’.

‘The Twelve Years of Christmas’ is the first twelve of the original form letters [now up to twenty-five] written between 1984 and 1995. I have not updated facts or situations that have since changed, as the accounts are reflective of those times.

Most chapter-letters cover a year in the life of our family. Occasionally the original letters repeated information from earlier ones just to help any newcomers to the mailing list get their bearings and catch up, and sometimes just from absent-mindedness. RDC

EPIGRAPH

‘Democracy cannot be allowed to function in a family

where the children equal or outnumber the adults!

Nor can it be allowed in penal or mental institutions,

no matter what the odds are.’

Probably quoted by a warden, an asylum director

or a very smart parent.

MUCH ADO ABOUT ME

& A BIT ABOUT TOM

IN THE BEGINNING:

My parents eloped along with another couple. My father, Jack Doan, was in his second last year of his B.Sc. at O.A.C., the Ontario College of Agriculture in Guelph. The other groom was also away at university. My mom, Pauline Scott, was living on her parents’ farm and clerking in a store in the nearby village of Norwich, Ontario.

None of the four sets of parents thought it was a good time for the couples to get married. But they did anyway. Mom never told me when the other couple decided to break the news to their parents. But by the time Mom and Dad got around to telling theirs, Dad was into his final year, and I was already in the stork’s pick-up and delivery queue. Mom continued living with her parents till Dad graduated the summer after I was born.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, ‘T’was the (proverbial) cold and wintry night’. (Here I’ve had to rely on accounts of the events from my grandparents, who have always been fairly reliable sources), as Mom was too pre-occupied to do anything more than push and cry.)

My grandmother, ‘Nanny’ as I later named her as soon as I could talk, said that there had been several false alarms. My stubborn, unpunctual arrival was later to become my ‘arrhythmia of life pattern’. At every birth alert, my grandfather ‘Goggy’ as I later named him, my Mom’s younger brother Darwin (a.k.a. Tim) and the hired man, Bill—not to be confused with the horse which I later named Bill— had quickly taken themselves off to the barn to hand-milk the cattle. Because of that the men’s hands became extremely chapped. Not to mention the cows’ udders.

Nanny told me years afterwards how she had phoned the local country doctor first. In doing so, she accepted the fact that everyone on their rural party line and far beyond, would know about my arrival even before my Dad, who was away at college, could be told.

Next she called the neighbour lady, Bessie, it’s time! Come right over and help me! Pauline’s in labour and this baby’s acting like a big, mean one!

My grandfather Goggy heard the squeals, moans, grunts and groans coming from the front, spare bedroom. I was finally underway for sure! He shouted to my teenaged Uncle Tim, Quick boy! Take Bill and get out to the barn and stay there till we tell you to come back in. You don’t want to see or hear any of this!

As he grabbed a cold chicken leg from the ice-box and slurped a quick sip of very hot tea that he had poured out into a saucer to cool for fast consumption, he gurgled, This time, slop the hogs! (slurp) Feed the cattle and horses and the chickens too! Best gather the eggs and throw down more ensilage! (slurp) Just do anything else you can find to do! And milk the cows again for good measure. (slurp slurp)

As an afterthought he added, Better take some food along with you. Flossie (his pet name for my Nanny) says it’s going to be a long, hard delivery. Even harder than our cow Daisy the last time she calved!

Nanny told me, Land sakes alive! As soon as Dr. Meldrum looked under the sheet, he popped his head right back out and ordered, ‘Ladies, hold that headboard steady! I’m going to have to brace both my feet against the end of the bed and pull like ‘Billy-be-damned!’ Those shoulders are w-a-a-a-y too big to flip out the regular way. This boy is a real fighter! It’s like trying to pull a STOP sign through a canning funnel!

After the delivery, he wiped his hands then mopped a tea-towel over his leaking, steaming brow. Huffing and puffing he declared, "Well Pauline, it’s just a little girl, not a big boy. But she sure was mule-rump stubborn. I’d say she only hefts in at about seven pounds and a bit.

"Florence, tell Harry to bring in the poultry scales and we’ll find out for sure!

Pauline, your daughter will never need to stuff shoulder pads into her dresses. And try not to get too upset if kids start calling her ‘Giraffe’. You might want to consider steering her towards playing football or hockey.

He obviously wasn’t yet aware of my floppy, weak, double-jointed ankles.

THE YEARS BETWEEN:

I was raised in Aylmer, Ontario, southeast of London. After skipping my way through public school and East Elgin High School, both in Aylmer, I went on to the University of Western Ontario in London.

Just before our final exams for graduation, my roommate Sue had to nudge me to get on with my life. "Don’t you think you should start answering some of the Globe and Mail ads for High School Teachers?"

Without Sue’s prodding I might still be living in the sorority residence wondering what to do with a BA in French and Psychology.

The first bite on my applications, from the many pages of high school positions advertised, was a High School principal, Dr. Edwards. He phoned that he would like to pick me up and take me to his school in Ridgetown. There I could see the building, my ‘future’ French classroom (should I decide to come on board), some of the students and the faculty. Then he drove me back to London to officially interview me in my residence.

Without asking me many questions, Dr. Edwards hired me on the spot, right there in our living room. I was quite flattered that he had been so overwhelmed by my qualifications.

He said, Miss Doan, I’m hiring you for two reasons. First of all, my oldest daughter belonged to this same sorority and she even lived in this very same sorority house. (I eventually ended up teaching his youngest, after-thought daughter.) Then he continued with his second reason, Besides, I’m desperate for teachers!

The principal then warned me, You’re going to have to teach all the French in grades ten to thirteen because the other teacher is older and has a child at home. She only wants the easier, lower grades. And she has seniority!

I naively replied, That’s OK. I was in grade thirteen just three years ago myself, so it should come back to me fairly easily.

And we signed the contract that was to ‘change the course of my life forever’.

My job was contingent upon me successfully completing the first of two emergency summer courses. It was a rush job to get more teachers trained fast. For admission into that course at the Ontario College of Education, I had to undergo an interview with a committee there in Toronto.

I’d only been to Toronto once before, back in the forties. I had traveled by train, underground through Union Station and on up north to Girl Guide camp. That hardly counts as a visit to the city.

Being a quirky, perky blonde (sun and chemically-aided), I flitted into the conference room in full splendour. I was quite a fashion-platter in my white pumps; full-skirted pink dress with navy polka dots over a fluffy, yet crisp, billowing crinoline; a colour co-ordinated, saucy, pink shell hat with navy polka-dotted veil, perched chicly atop my Grace Kelly styled, French roll chignon; and wearing the ‘de rigueur’ white gloves.

As my crinoline and I parachuted down onto a chair, the resulting breeze ruffled the few, carefully combed hairs of the nearly bald man beside me.

From there I faced a clump of old men. Some plopped so far down into the too-soft leather chairs, that only their upper extremities were visible. Others, somewhat more alert, elbows propped on the table to support nodding heads, gradually noticed that I was there.

They asked a few questions as they barely glanced at my university transcripts. Then they asked me, Miss Doan, what career would you choose if you weren’t accepted into teaching?

Wh-a-a-a-t? No one had warned me about a possible trick question like that! Completely unprepared, I earnestly replied, Well, I think I’d like to be an airplane stewardess or a circus acrobat.

You could have heard their eyeballs rolling back into their sockets like bowling balls clunking down an alley.

In spite of everything, I was accepted into the course, of course. Because the system was so short of teachers.

MY TEACHING CAREER PART I:

When sorority sister Liz Jeffery and I first appeared together as new-hires at the Ridgetown District High School, the students and most of the staff referred to us as ‘Mutt and Jeff’ from the old comic strip. Liz, the tall, dark, gorgeous, snapping-eyed, model-type was ‘Jeff’. I was the short, still blonde, ‘Mutt’.

When I started that first teaching job I was twenty years old. There were male students in my grade thirteen classes who had quit school to work for awhile and were back to finish high school. Some needed French and/or Latin, pre-requisites for college or university at that time. And they were the same age as I was!

I also found, already on staff, ‘my old Latin teacher’ who had taught me throughout high school back in Aylmer. After I excitedly referred to her by that title, she asked me, with just a hint of bitterness, Would you please stop calling me your ‘old’ Latin teacher?! I’m barely ten years older than you!

Both she and I together were fighting uphill battles, as Latin and French have rarely been teenaged boys’ favourite subjects.

It seemed that no matter where Liz or I needed to go, we couldn’t get there from Ridgetown. So, early in the fall Liz and I decided to buy a car even though I had never driven one before. That car was worth a chapter on its own but not here and not now.

Then I had to learn to drive from Liz and take my driver’s licence test in the town where my students lived and watched.

During that school year, Liz and I both broke up with the fellows that we had been steadily dating. After that, I just drifted date-wise, but in the spring Liz started dating a man called Thomas.

A BIT ABOUT TOM:

Thomas had just returned from working in Toledo, Ohio to help care for his mother who had had several strokes. His father had died when he was about ten, leaving his mother to raise three sons on her own. Since he was the middle and according to him, the most picked-on or ignored of the three boys, and the only childless, unmarried one at the time of his mother’s illness, he answered the call.

Liz dated Tom for a few months. Near the end of our first year of teaching, she decided to go back to Western and live at home while working on her Masters degree in English. That was the subject that she had been teaching instead of her specialty, music. The music was being taught by the same French teacher who didn’t want the higher grades of French and ‘who had seniority’. Liz still wanted to finish off that second summer of teachers’ training. So that summer Tom would occasionally come to Toronto to visit Liz and go for rides in our $150, jointly-owned 1946 Mercury. During one of their jaunts, the car collapsed into a permanent coma somewhere outside of Toronto. A garage man offered them $50 dollars for it, despite Liz’s protestations as to its much higher value. They had to accept the offer if they wanted to get back to the city.

So that’s why I had to buy a car of my own: a brand new 1957 Volkswagon Beetle. VWs were a hot item and in short supply. The dealer could only sell to people with a Toronto address because people from Quebec were trying to snap them up and you were only supposed to buy within your own residential district. It hadn’t arrived by the time I had to go back to Ridgetown. The dealer couldn’t reach me at the Scarborough house that several of us girls had been renting. He nearly resold it, thinking that maybe because of my French name, I was really from Quebec after all. It cost me $1,768.00 and became part of me.

Tom’s mother passed away that summer. After Liz became immersed in campus life again, that left poor, orphaned Tom with nothing to do on weekends so he started showing up at my apartment door.

Every time my door knocked, I would say to myself (since I was living alone), Hooray! Maybe that’s somebody new and exciting for me to date!

Then, Oh no! It’s just bored and lonely Tom.

So for something to do, we hung out together. Our ‘dates’ mostly consisted of driving out to Rondeau Park or just going around to visit his married friends and their families, maybe playing cards with them. They were all great people and fun to be with, especially when we all went to the dances at the old, wooden, Rondeau Dance Pavilion on Lake Erie—which we continued to do up until it burned down in the seventies.

At any rate, we became very comfortable with each other and maybe seeing his friends with children gave him the inspiration or courage to propose after my second year of teaching and after my return from Europe.

During my third year of teaching, which was required for obtaining my Permanent High School Teaching Certificate, Tom and I were married at Christmas. That was about the only time of year that teachers could get enough time off for even a brief honeymoon. Unless they weren’t spending their summers at summer school and could honeymoon then. I had already used up that summer, my first one free of summer school, to travel to Europe with sorority friends Sue and Sonya.

Right after our honeymoon, Tom and I moved into a rented farmhouse across from a rural cemetery near Tilbury, an hour away from my work.

Up till that point in my life, I had been terrified of dogs. Yet, just back from our honeymoon, without even mentioning it to me, Tom went out and bought Rex, a psychopathic, black Labrador Retriever. That was to set a pattern for the rest of our pets’ personalities and our marriage.

Then, as Tom tells it, Shell went and got herself pregnant! Tom, ever the martyr, started drinking my share of any alcoholic drinks offered. He continues his martyrdom to this day, pregnancy and menopause or not.

That June I resigned my high school teaching position as was expected of female teachers in my ‘condition’. So I started birthing kids instead of just teaching them.

AND SO BEGAN THE CRAIG CLAN:

Six weeks after we moved into our new home near Pegtown, Tom and I were stopped at Pegtown’s one and only stoplight—and it’s still the only one. It was 5:00 AM. I was in labour for our first-born and within less than an hour of delivery time. While stopped for the red traffic signal, Tom and I came to one of the few things in our marriage that we’ve agreed upon and stuck to.

Tom, I yelped, clutching my belly, Since I’ve been teaching French and since my females relatives and I all have French names, what about me giving French names to any daughters that we have? OK?? I grunted.

He said distractedly, "OK. Hey, would you look at that dod-darned (Tom’s most serious cuss words) idiot signaling a left but going straight through anyway!

So what do I get to do in all of this?— as if he hadn’t done enough already, nine months earlier!

From my doubled-over position with my head under the dashboard, I groaned, Since all your ancestors and half of mine were Scottish, why don’t you give Scottish names to any sons we have. And you can have free reign with any pets’ names too. NOW JUST HURRY UP!!

My Teaching Career: Part II

We raised the children, barely surviving the year when all six of them were teenagers at the same time. I had launched them toward the local, rural, educational system. The ‘system’ was three schools in three different locations, spread over two counties.

By then they were old enough to keep themselves alive if I should die or just disappear mysteriously.

Instead, I entered a totally new world of teaching—French for less than half-time at the elementary school level. I was also still working year-round on my Honours B.Ed. Degree. This required a summer of driving daily to Windsor Teachers College. That degree ultimately took several years of night-time winter classes, daytime summer classes and one horrendous, never-to-be repeated night Intercession course.

After I changed to full-time teaching, but before totally burning out with Fibromyalgia, I had to stop my laboriously handwritten, Christmas/Holiday Greeting cards. For the sake of time and sanity, I started typing them out as ‘Form Letters’, but still with a personal handwritten note included..

Some twenty years later, I decided to put some of them together as ‘The Twelve Years of Christmas’ and expose myself and our family to public ridicule. If you are in a similar situation, read this book for support and encouragement. If you enjoy other people’s misery and masochism, this is perfect for you. If you or someone near and dear to you needs to be dissuaded from entering the teaching profession, from having children or even pets, hurry out and buy this book for them.

OUR CHILDREN

OUR CHILDREN

Tom and I had four ‘natural’ children the hard way: a lopsided three girls, Michelle, Elise and DeLainie vs. one boy, McLochlan. Adopting two boys then gave us three of everything. Colin and Glengarry, identical twins had just turned five years old when they came to live with us. They fit into our existing family of four with one year’s space between them and our next older child Lochlan and another year’s space between the two of them and our next younger child Elise, as required by the Childrens Aid Society.

We had seen their picture with a brief write-up in the London Free Press’s special feature, "Today’s Child". That column promoted the adoption of older, physically, developmentally or mentally challenged, mixed-race or minority race children, all of whom were hard to place for adoption in the sixties. The program which has since been discontinued, was so successful that we, personally, feel that it should be started up again for the more than 22,000 Canadian young people of varying ages who are presently hoping for adoptive homes or even foster homes.

Colin and Glen were second and third youngest of nine children born to an ailing, Canadian First Nations mother and an abusive, alcoholic, white father. At the time of the family’s breakup, when all the children were made ‘Wards of the Crown’, most prospective, adoptive parents preferred newborns. Three of the children were still young enough for adoption. Some of their slightly older siblings were considered too old and went to live in foster homes or at the Salvation Army Children’s Village. The oldest boy, in his mid-teens, was not deemed suitable for adoption or foster care placement because of problems with his behaviour and with the law. He went to live with his grandmother on a reserve, but has spent most of his life incarcerated.

Although the twins were also young enough for adoption at the time of their wardship, it was delayed while they tried to find the source of the physical impairment to Glen’s one side. When the family broke up, their birth mother had been hospitalized for tuberculosis. It was believed that Glen might have TB of the bone so he was hospitalized too.

In the meantime Colin was in foster homes. Must later, after their mother had checked herself out of the TB sanitarium before being cured, the doctors realized that Glen didn’t have TB after all. He and Colin were brought back together into a foster home with a wonderful, loving, Dutch-Canadian family. Following an operation to clip and lengthen Glen’s Achilles tendon so that his heel could reach the ground, he and Colin were finally put up for adoption together. The process had taken about three years. Fortunately the CAS had a policy of not separating twins if possible.

We are very grateful to the CAS, their social worker Cathy Basile, our worker Mrs. Pat Chalifoux and Glen’s London orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Cameron, who continued to see him for years after the adoption was finalized.

Glen’s condition was later believed to be Cerebral Palsy of the whole one side. He had been the second in line during a difficult, premature birth to their petite mother. Although tiny at birth, they are now stocky fellows, much like most of their natural siblings.

Colin and Glen have contributed greatly to many of our most exciting and interesting times. We feel very blessed to have been chosen to be their parents.

RDC

Pict1-1984CraigFamilyAppleTree.tif

1984

FORM-LETTERS, CLASS HORRORS

& ACCIDENTS

1984

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Dear Eleanor and Mack,

Tom and I hope that all is well and that you, Mack, have fully recovered from your heart attack by now and are able to get back to your beloved curling.

Every so often when the conversation turns to dogs, our kids start talking about the time that we went to St. Thomas to buy our ‘Pedigree’ Lab puppy,