Look Mom, Santa Brought a Skylight

It was just after sun-up on a bright Christmas morn, and I was still dreamily snuggled in my bed. Awoken suddenly by a loud crash, my immediate assumption was that our cat knocked down the Christmas tree – again. My belief in that scenario was heightened when the first thing I saw as I tossed the covers aside in the new dawn morning, was said cat skittering toward his under-the-bed sanctuary as fast as his little ginger legs could carry him.

“Oh dear, what have you done now,” I muttered as I stumbled from my bed to survey the damage?

At the time, my mom and I were living in the basement apartment of my grandparents’ house. My uncle had built an extension on the back where he and his family lived for a few years before buying his own home an hour outside the city.

When he moved his family out, Mom and I agreed to move in. My older brothers had already left the province and were building lives and families of their own, and since my parents split when I was young, it was just the two of us left at home. Nan and Pop’s house was centrally located. It was convenient for us, and ideal that we could be there for my aging grandparents, should the need arise.

My bedroom being located off the living room; it didn’t take long for me to realize something was very wrong. As I approached the doorway, I noticed a bright light centred in the middle of the room, much too bright for it to be shining through the window, and only in one spot.

Mom, who had also been awakened by the sound, was already up - and she wasn’t happy. When I discovered what the problem was, and why the light was shining so brightly in one section of the room, I could only grin. It wasn’t a grin of happiness, more like resignation.

“Looks like we got a skylight,” I said, trying to make light of the situation. Mom didn’t find it funny, and there was nothing light about this situation, in her opinion.

It was 8:00 a.m., and along with the gift exchange, food preparation, phone calls, greetings and various other duties required on a typical Christmas morning, we now had to deal with a hole in the roof in the middle of the living room.

It wasn’t a huge hole, less than two feet in diameter, but it was there. Wood chips and chunks of drywall were strewn on the floor and furniture, and the sun was shining through where it shouldn’t. It was cold, it was wet, and the carpet was soaked with snow.

Yes, snow!

Growing up on an island in the north Atlantic, I was used to snow. Forty to sixty centimeters was not an unusual accumulation for a December day, sometimes even up to one hundred. I was used to shoveling the walkway three or four times a day during a storm or tossing heavy scoops over the six-foot snowbanks that lined the driveway. I was accustomed to having to climb out the living room window to clear the mountainous drifts prohibiting us from opening the doors.

I was not accustomed to having to shovel the living room.

While I was clearing the snow and attempting to clean up the mess, Mom was on the phone, nearly panicking, begging my cousin for help. She didn’t have to try very hard. Of course, he was willing. With both my brothers no longer living in the province, contacting my cousin was the best option, outside of trying to hire a contractor on Christmas day. Besides, he had experience.

A little while later, the six-foot-three overall-clad elf showed up with a couple of helpers in his old pickup. Arms stuffed with tools and supplies, up to the rooftop they clambered. An hour later, the snow was cleared, the hole was patched, and a promise was made to come back later in the week to redo the entire roof.

The potential catastrophe of a ruined Christmas avoided, we sat down for a coffee and some holiday treats with my cousin and his helpers. Always the jovial one, he made a joke about Santa breaking the roof with his sleigh. We’re fairly sure it was the snow, though.

We sat and laughed with our unexpected but suddenly required guests for approximately half an hour before it was time for them to get back to their families for their own celebrations. Before they left, Mom attempted to pay them for their work, but they all refused, telling her to consider it a Christmas present. We thanked them and sent them on their way.

With the roof patched, and my mom finally able to relax, we continued with the job of cleaning up the mess in the living room. When we finished, the only evidence remaining below the patched roof was the wet spot on the carpet. We exchanged gifts, prepared food, made the phone calls and greetings and still had everything done in time to join Nan and Pop for the turkey dinner.

*

That Christmas “catastrophe” happened almost forty years ago and is still fresh in my mind. There have been decades of holiday celebrations in between - some I remember well, some I don’t. But that’s the thing about holiday memories, the moments that stand out most are often the ones where things didn’t go as planned. Those are the ones we hold on to. Those are the ones we laugh about or cry about over and again with every retelling.

Those are the memories that birth the tales that span generations; the ones that are passed on from our children to their children, even if our children were not yet born at the time the initial memory was made. They remember them as if they were there. They guard those memories as if they were their own, and they pass them down to their children as the same treasures we passed on to them.

I guess there’s a lesson to be learned from past holidays gone wrong. They always leave a story to tell. When unexpected or unwelcome events happen that simply disrupt the normal flow of the season, try to judge them with a smile in your heart. I guarantee you’ll be talking about them years later with a smile on your face.

So, if you’re sitting by the fire or gathered around the tree, listening to Uncle Rob play Christmas songs on his guitar while grandpa deliberately messes up the lyrics, listen closely. Take it all in. Absorb the moment. And, just maybe, one day you’ll be blessed enough to be singing those same messed-up lyrics to your grandkids while sharing memories of their great-grandpa with them.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all. Excuse me now, I’ve got a story to tell…

“Hey girls, have I ever told you about the time that Santa’s sleigh broke a hole in great-grandma’s roof, and he sent his elves to fix it on Christmas morning?”