Nan's Christmas

Nan, my grandmother (I was too cool to call her Nana), started preparing for Christmas some time in early fall when she'd take a taxi to the open air market on York St, to buy everything she'd need for her fabulous Christmas cake.  I've never tasted better!

She'd work away in her tiny kitchen mixing all the ingredients and then covering the cake with cheese cloth...I don't know why unless it was to keep it from drying out.  Just before Christmas she'd place a thick layer of that thick icing (fondant?) over it and decorate it with little edible beads.  I loved the cake but always removed the icing.

We had an old cast iron wood stove in the kitchen/livingroom that served to keep us warm and for Nan to cook on.  She would prepare the tastiest Christmas dinner...turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and some veggie along with her home-made plum pudding for dessert on that old stove.  None of her skills were passed down to either my mother or me.  

Mom had bought Nan a beautiful Duncan Fyfe diningroom set (they've always been very expensive so I have no idea how she could afford it) and it would be pulled into the center of the room and decorated beautifully for our dinner.  For as long as I can remember she'd invite old Bob, a single retired teacher, to every dinner celebration and he'd enjoy his dinner, never say a word, and leave for home after with a huge goodie bag from Nan.  He was one of her bootlegging customers, too, and I don't think I ever heard him speak.

I remember we all ate way too much because Nan was an excellent cook and it was kind of hard to move after dinner.  Nan and Mom would do all the clean-up...I was a little princess who was never expected to do any housework and this is something that made me ill prepared to look after my own home when I got married.

Nan was more like a mother to me than a grandmother and I never appreciated her when she was alive.  It was her who fought the Children's Aid who tried to take me away from my unwed mother when I was born...hard to believe we were so backward in those days (1940).  Mom and I moved in with Nan and Bobba (this is what I called my grandfather and I think it might have been how I said Grampa when I was very little and it stuck) and I lived there until I got married in 1957.  Then my little family continued to come to Nan's for Christmas dinners.

My grandmother was my most important family member and it's her I want to see first when I pass away.  I want to apologize for being a bitchy, self-centered teenager to my generous, loving, good hearted Nan.