Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - A Perfect, Imperfect Christmas - Christmas at the Turlingtons’ & Christmas on the Road

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

“Family and friends, they sure mess up our lives…”For our final episode of this season, two classic Vinyl Cafe Christmas stories by Stuart McLean. Dave tries to make himself useful at Mary Turlington’s festive dinner party, with disastrous consequences. In our second story, the family experiences a very different kind of Christmas, special in its own way.And Jess realizes a surprising theme that links these two fan favourites…something that she hopes will help her unlock the spirit of the season. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. We've made it. It's almost here. The most relentless of all of the holidays. The ultimate deadline. Christmas Day. Christmas is not the kind of thing you can be late for. At least not in my house. Asking the kids to wait five minutes while you finish up just isn't going to happen. And it's not going to happen here either. I am not going to make you wait even one second more.

This is Christmas at the Turlington's. No one in God's great creation gives themselves over to Christmas more than Morley's neighbor, Mary Turlington. To the season and the spirit behind it, to be sure, but not only to the season and the spirit, to the whole nine yards, to all the noise that surrounds Christmas. I've chosen my Christmas color, Mary announced triumphantly to her husband Bert one night in July. I'm doing cinnamon this year. Notice it's not we, not we're doing cinnamon. For Mary Turlington, Christmas is a solo sport. We'll need a copper tree, she said to Bert a few days later. And catch that shift. An important

distinction. Mary writes the score, but Mary expects her husband Bert to be in the band. By right of marriage, Bert is enlisted, inducted, and suited up. Mary, who's taken up with and over by Christmas every year, became particularly focused on this Christmas some six weeks ago. Until six weeks ago, Mary believed that her mother and her sister and her sister's husband and their four children and her brother and his kids were all coming to her house for Christmas. But one by one, her family bailed. Her brother got a new job and couldn't afford the time away.

Her sister's husband got sick. Her mother called and said, I don't know, I don't know. If no one else is coming, maybe I should stay at home. Anyone else might have been disappointed. Anyone else so caught up in Christmas preparations might have fallen apart. What's the point, they might have asked. I work so darn hard, no one cares. Mary didn't fall apart.

Mary dug deeper. Means we can do things my way for a change, she said to Bert. Apparently Mary, who had been all about control, had also been all about compromise. I thought I was going to have to do a turkey again this year, said Mary. Emma's so conservative on the question of turkey. On the question of turkey at Christmas, Burt felt pretty conservative himself. But he was conservative enough not to admit it. Instead of being unsettled that her plans were unraveling, Mary was becoming unleashed.

She was Mary Unshackled. What do you think of henna, she said to Burt one night. Who, said Burt? If we Bert one night. Who, said Bert? If we henned your hair, said Mary. Think of how nice you'd go with a copper tree. Mary had apparently shifted into some previously undiscovered Christmas gear. And Bert, who had always been delighted by his wife's Christmas cheer, was beginning to feel something that was not delight. It was a bigger feeling than delight, a whirring

sort of feeling, fear. Bert was fearful that Mary's Christmas was about to overtake him. He felt like the Cadillac in that song about the little Nash Rambler. Beep, beep, said Bert. What, said Mary? Oh, nothing, said Bert. As Christmas got closer, Mary set out their collection of Christmas candles. A parade of little paraffin men and women in chipped red and yellow choir robes. I know they're cheesy, she said, but I love these things more than anything. The candles had been in Mary's family since before she was born. Mary's parents had bought the choir master and his wife on their very first Christmas together, a man and a woman singing their little paraffin hearts out.

Mary's mother had added to the candle collection each time she had a child. And when her children married, she added wax figures for each husband and wife, and then for each of the grandchildren. After 50 Christmases, there were now 23 candles that lived 11 months of the year wrapped in tissue at the bottom of a shoebox and spent the holiday season marching along the mantle, the two original candles at the head of the paraffin parade. Only one candle had ever been lit

when Mary's sister's husband left her for his aerobics instructor. left her for his aerobics instructor. Mary's mother burned his candle in the front window on Halloween. She scraped what remained of the candle off the window frame, wrapped the little wax puddle in beautiful gold foil, and mailed it to the ex-husband the following Christmas. Ever since then, the candles have assumed iconic status in the family. Every Christmas, Mary's mother picks up her candle and says, maybe when I die, you could light mine and put it on my coffin. says, maybe when I die you could light mine and put it on my coffin. We'll never light them,

said Mary. Never, ever. Mary found a local welder to make her copper tray. He came to the house and measured their living room door early in December. I won't be able to use copper, he said. I'm going to use steel, but it'll be oxidized steel, so it'll be copper colored. It'll look sort of, sort of, he was searching for the right word. Dead, said Bert. That was the night when Mary told Bert she'd settled on scallops for Christmas dinner. I'm going to poach them in saffron, she said, so they'll look nice with a tree. And that was the moment that galvanized Bert. That was the moment Bert decided the time for action had come. Bert was standing in his driveway when lightning struck. Well, not literally lightning, but close to it. There was a flash and a loud clap and Bert jumped back,

his hands flying up to protect his head. And then as he stood there, a giant set of fiberglass reindeer antlers fell out of the sky and planted themselves in the front lawn right beside him. Bert stared at the vibrating antlers thinking how ironic it would have been, given his current situation, to have been taken out by a giant Christmas decoration. And then he looked up and he spotted his neighbor, Dave, running down the sidewalk. Dave with his face covered in soot and his eyebrows singed. You'll never believe what just happened, said Dave. And it was suddenly obvious to Bert what had to happen. Mary needed to be distracted or Christmas, as Bert knew and loved,

it was going to be lost. And if Mary's family weren't going to show up and do the job, Bert needed someone else to take up the slack, someone who rubbed up against his wife a bit, the way her sister did, someone to preoccupy her. Hey, said Bert, Dave, how are you? And that is why two weeks later, two o'clock on Christmas afternoon, Morley looked at her husband across the mess of their living room and said, if we're going to get to the Turlington's on time, we better start getting ready right now. Dave was standing by the couch in his pajamas, knee-deep in wrapping paper.

He was holding Morley's present. It looked like it had been wrapped by a small animal with no opposable thumbs. This is for you, he said, holding the package out. And he kicked his way across the room towards Morley as if it was an October afternoon, and he was kicking his way through a leaf-strewn park. I love you, he said. Sam, 12 years old, and crawling through the paper toward the back of the tree like a caver,

stopped dead and looked over his shoulders at his parents, and he said, will you two please stop talking like that in front of me? It's inappropriate. At two o'clock in the afternoon at Dave's house, Christmas was still in full swing. Two doors down the street, however, at Christmas Central, two doors down the street at the Turlington's house, there was very little evidence that Christmas had even happened. The Turlington twins had already taken their presents back to their rooms, and they'd put things away in their drawers and cupboards. And while Sam dove under another pile of paper as if he were snorkeling, the Turlington twins, dressed in their matching Christmas sweaters, were sitting at the dining room table writing out their thank-you cards.

were sitting at the dining room table writing out their thank you cards. 21-year-old Adam Turlington was sitting on the sofa, carefully folding wrapping paper and sorting it into two neatly labeled boxes. One marked recycle, the other marked reuse. Mary Turlington was vacuuming in a pair of gold kitten heel shoes. And soon, soon these two different cultures were going to be brought under the same roof. Dave and Morley and Sam and Stephanie were heading up the Turlington's walk. And now, as they stood on the Turlington stoop, Morley turned and she took Dave's arm at the elbow and she said, best behavior.

Very best, said Dave, nodding earnestly. And he met it. They were both thinking of other dinners at the Turlington's, the competitive strain, the abrasive political discussions. Dave took a deep breath. Very best, he said again. And then Dave reached out, and he rang the Turlington's bell. Mary opened the door and stared at Dave, and there was an uncomfortable beat before anyone said anything

Mary in a long black evening gown, gold earrings her hair a strangely artificial shade of orange her hair sprayed and pulled tightly back into a bun Mary standing there like she was expecting the queen and finding a man from the stables instead. Mary in her formal dress and Dave in his cords and a flannel shirt. If you could have seen inside of them, you could have watched both of their hearts sinking,

both of them thinking, how did I get myself into this? And before either of them had time for a second thought, Dave saw Mary Turlington's Christmas tree for the first time. It had a steel trunk and steel branches and steel needles and steel decorations, and Dave, who had been expecting greenery when he glanced into the living room, blinked. To Dave, the tree looked rusty. The tree looked sharp, like some kind of giant, corroded medieval weapon,

or a bombed-out electrical tower left rotting in the fields of some war-torn country. Those are the thoughts that were tumbling through Dave's mind as he stood in the hall with his mouth hanging open, and the very first words that came out of his mouth were not, Happy Christmas, Mary, or Mary, you look wonderful. The first words out of Dave's mouth were, my God. What happened to your tree? Morley saw Mary's jaw twitch and thought she heard a faraway whoosh.

It was the sound of an evening of merriment being sucked out of the house. Dave glanced helplessly at Morley. I'm trying, his expression seemed to say. Morley stared back. Try harder. And then Bert was ushering everyone into the living room, posing them around the rusting tree, chatting with forced cheeriness. He pulled out his new digital camera. Everyone smiled, said Bert, hopefully. And Dave did try harder. In an effort to show Mary that he appreciated her hospitality, Dave sunk his hand into a bowl of gourmet snack mix that was on the hall table. As soon as he popped the stuff into his mouth, he knew he had a problem. He glanced down at the bowl. There were dried cranberries in there and what looked like bits of cinnamon stick.

But what he thought were tiny potato chips were now looking suspiciously like the stuff you might use at the bottom of a hamster cage. Dave's teeth grinded away at what he now realized were cedar shavings. And it dawned on him that he was eating Mary's Christmas potpourri. When he looked up to see if anyone had noticed, he saw Mary staring at him from the other side of the living room. So instead of spitting into his hand, which is what he wanted to do, Dave smiled gamely and swallowed. Bert handed Morley a glass of wine and reached for his camera. Hold it there, Dave, said Bert. The more Dave tried, the worse things got.

Just don't touch anything, whispered Morley, taking a clove-studded orange from Dave's hand. Everyone was in the kitchen, and everyone was busy. Morley was tossing the salad. Bert was taking pictures. Mary was dusting the turkey with cinnamon. Well, what can I do, whispered Dave to Morley. Just be helpful, said Morley.

Just look around for something that needs doing and just do it, don't ask. Dave couldn't see anything that needed doing in the kitchen, so he went in the dining room. There were flower petals and little pieces of bronze-colored glitter all over the dining room table. Dave went to the hall closet and got the hand vac and hoovered them up. Then he picked up a pack of matches from the buffet and headed One by one he lit the wicks in the heads of the little wax choir. A few of the oldest figures burned remarkably fast. The little wax puddle at the top of their heads sunk into their skulls. So the flame of the candle shone through their eyes. It gave them a slightly demonic look.

It would be more dramatic, thought Dave, if he dimmed the room lights. That way the candles would be the first thing you saw when you came into the room. They were certainly the first thing that Mary saw when she came into the room. She was carrying a salmon appetizer. They managed to pick most of the salmon off the floor before the Turlington's dog got too much. Dave scooped up the biggest piece and wiped it off in a napkin. Five-second rule, he said, grinning. Five second rule, he said, grinning.

Hold it right there, said Bert, reaching for his camera. Somehow or other, somehow or other, they managed to get through the meal. After the candles and the salmon fiasco, Mary had headed back into the kitchen like an army general determined to overcome defeat in the field. Bert kept jumping up and blinding everyone with a flash of his camera at regular intervals and morally hung on to her wine glass like a drowning woman clutching a life preserver.

or a wine glass like a drowning woman clutching a life preserver. In fact, in fact, by the time the turkey was finished, things seemed to have settled down so nicely that Dave felt it might just be safe to help out again. He headed into the kitchen to see about the plum pudding. You'll need more than that, said Dave, as he watched Mary dose the pudding with a shot glass of liquor. Now whether or not she did need more is a moot point. Point is, if Mary had added just a little more, everything might have been all right. But she didn't. Mary wasn't about to let Dave tell her how things should be done in her kitchen.

So instead of adding just a little more brandy, Mary looked at Dave icily and she said, That'll be plenty. And Dave moved by only the best of intentions. Dave, not wanting anything more to go wrong, waited until Mary wasn't looking and gave the pudding an extra shot of brandy anyway. And Mary, not wanting to be proved wrong about how much brandy you needed

to light a plum pudding, waited until Dave wasn't looking and gave it two extra shots herself. herself. So the pudding was well and truly soaked when Mary carried it to the table and struck a match. There was a whoosh and a bright blue flash, and the pudding went up like a Roman candle. A number of things caught fire. Most spectacularly, the cinnamon-colored silk ribbon that Mary had wrapped around the bun at the top of her head. The ribbon acted like a wick. And in an instant, blue flames were shooting out of Mary's heavily hair-sprayed hair. She stood stock still there by the table, holding the match in front of her, looking like the Statue of Liberty on fire.

Bert jumped for his camera. Unfortunately, it was Dave who put her out. He used a pitcher of eggnog. It was hours later, after Mary's hair had been put out and the dining room generally hosed down and the twins in bed and Dave and Morley safe at home that Mary's sister Emma phoned. Mary took the portable phone into the den while Bert finished tidying in the kitchen. Emmy sent her love, said Mary when she returned. Her eyes were red. She'd

obviously been crying. I guess I miss her, she said. I hadn't thought of her all day. I hadn't missed her at all, but you know, I've never had a Christmas without her. Did you know that? Did you tell her about the candles, said Bert? And the pudding, said Mary, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her plaid shirt. She reminded me of the Christmas the dog ate the turkey. And the time Adam knocked the tree over. Remember that? And the time Adam knocked the tree over, remember that? Family and friends, said Bert.

Family and friends. They sure mess up our lives. They sure do, said Mary. But she was smiling now. They sure do. Thank you very much. That was Christmas at the Turlington's. That might be my favorite David Morley story. It's definitely my favorite Vinyl Cafe Christmas story.

And it's because of that last line. That last line, family and friends, they sure mess up our lives. That is probably my favorite line that Stuart ever wrote. Is that true? It's a toss up. There's that line. And then there's the ending of the story, Fish Head, the one that goes, all these little moments, he thought, who knows which ones are going to count and which ones will be forgotten. It's never the things you think. It isn't the fishing trip or even the fish.

It's the fish head. It's the smoke, never the fire. And the smoke is wily and wispy and the smell of it gets in your hair and on your clothes. And no matter how much you try to duck around the flames, the wind always changes. It always gets in your eyes. Those two pieces of writing, the passage at the end of Fish Head and the part in the story you just heard, the part where Bert says,

family and friends, they sure mess up our lives. Those two bits of writing summarize as well as anything can what I think Stuart was trying to say with our show. There are two main ideas. The first one is this, the idea that life is made up of little moments and you never know which one is going to count. And the other? The other is the one that Stuart gets at with that story you've just heard, Christmas at the Turlington's. Life is not perfect. Things don't always work out, or at least not the way you think they're going to or the way you hope they're going to work out. Life is messy and it's often the ones we love the most who mess up our

lives the most because, of course, they're the ones we care about the most and the ones who care about us the most. Without them, without those complexities, without those challenges, life would be nice and tidy but also kind of predictable. Where's the fun in that? Life is messy, but the magic is in the mess. That is really hard for me to remember at this time of year. I love Christmas. And for many years, a big part of my job was to create Christmas memories for other people. And now I don't have that. So I get pretty intense at this time of year. It's like the energy and time that used to go into putting 50 Christmas shows on every year now goes into one room of my own house. Poor Josh. Too easily, I go into the place of perfection, wanting to create a perfect Christmas for my

family, whatever that means. Like, who knows? What does that even mean? I'm not sure I even know what it means. And I have to remind myself all the time that the magic is in the mess. It's never in the perfect. It never is. Family and friends do mess up our lives. And that's a good thing. So that's probably my all-time favorite Vinyl Cafe story for that reason, for that one single line at the end that so perfectly captures how Stuart saw the world and how I do too. But also because it's so damn funny. I mean, I can never ever look at a bowl of potpourri without thinking, Dave's teeth grinded away at what he now realized were cedar shavings.

And the part about the candles and Bert and his digital camera. I love it all. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another hilarious Christmas story. So stick around. Welcome back. Time for our second story now. This is Christmas on the Road. Late on the night of December the 23rd on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, on a black and largely lonely stretch of Highway 132,

not far from the New Brunswick border, not far from the village of Saint-Germain, Eustace Boisclare stood in the empty parking lot of the motel he has owned for 27 years, La Vache-Curie. for 27 years, Lavash Kiri, took the last drag of his home-rolled cigarette and reached up to the big lever on the outside wall of the motel office. He muttered, Saint-Esprit. Then he pulled the lever and the lights in the motel's road sign flickered, dimmed, and snapped off. And except for the ringing in Eustace's ears, the night was suddenly and profoundly quiet. There were no guests left in the motel except for a trucker from Pisicky in room nine who had the flu and who Eustace hadn't seen for 13 hours. Anyway, he was paid up and would probably leave somewhere in the night unannounced, good riddance.

he was paid up and would probably leave somewhere in the night unannounced. Good riddance. Eustace didn't want any guests. He had turned off the heat in all the empty rooms. Eustace was bracing himself for a long and lonely Christmas. Ever since his wife Marie Claire had passed on, God rest her soul, Christmas was always long and lonely. He would do his best to avoid it. He had a case of beer and a case of Cheezies, and he was going to go on the Internet and play poker until it was safe to come out. He wasn't going to Mass, and he wasn't going to watch Rock Voisin sing Silent Night one more time. Tabarnush.

Little did he know what was heading his way. From the east, from Le Labrador, blowing already over Le Golfe Saint-Laurent, a winter storm of a magnitude that hadn't been seen around Saint-Germain for over a decade. And from the west, heading towards the motel and into the storm, a dark blue station wagon a day and a half out of Toronto. Coming from the east, the mother of all winter storms. Coming from the west, Dave and his family. They had left Toronto in a last-minute panic. They were heading to Cape Breton, to the Big Narrows,

to spend Christmas with Dave's mother. Packing was a nightmare. Dave standing in the driveway with a pile of boxes and suitcases stacked around him. He had rented a roof carrier, but none of the boxes would fit into the roof carrier. He made everyone unpack. He made everyone put their things into plastic bags. He stuffed the unpack. He made everyone put their things out of plastic bags. He stuffed the plastic bags into the roof carrier like he was stuffing a turkey. The turkey, however, went in the back with the dog on ice in a cooler. When they pulled out of their driveway, the car scraped the curb. They looked like they were fleeing a war zone. They looked like refugees, but they were on their way. At least we got the turkey in, said Dave to no one in

particular. It was a 27-pound, organically raised, free-range turkey. Cost him over $145. It cost him over $145. He wasn't about to leave it behind. What he didn't say was what he had left behind. When the roof rack was full and it looked like there mightn't be room for the turkey in the back, Dave had removed what he believed to be a non-essential item. Stephanie had brought it out to the car at the last minute. Is there room for this, she had said, nonchalantly holding up a blue athletic bag. Dave assumed the blue bag was extra Stephanie stuff.

When no one was looking, he carried it surreptitiously back into the house. They wouldn't notice the bag was missing for hours. For now, they were on their way. The kids in the back, Stephanie in the middle, between her brother Sam and her boyfriend Tommy Nolan. Stephanie's been dating Tommy Nolan for over a year now. She said, if we're going to Cape Breton for Christmas, can Tommy come? Tommy's an only child, and he has never been on a family road trip. on a family road trip.

Don't be getting ahead of me now. He climbed into the back seat with great expectation. I love this, he said. As soon as they were out of the city, as soon as they were on the highway, Dave barked highway like this was important news. Highway barked Dave and Sam slapped the back of the front seat and Morley said, okay, okay. And she reached under her seat and she started passing out bags of junk food.

Chips, Cheezies, Pop. Tommy chose Cracker Jacks. I hate Cheesies, he said quietly to Stephanie. Before he opened his Cracker Jacks, he took out a little black notebook from his jacket pocket, and at the top of a fresh page he wrote, Things I love about this trip. He wrote Cracker Jack and labeled it number one. He wrote number two, you, sitting beside me. And then he nudged Stephanie so she could read what he'd written. Five and a half hours passed before he started his second list.

Things I hate about this draft. Number one was dog farts. Tommy had underlined the word dog and written I hope in the margin. It had begun just outside of Cornwall. The air in the back seat suddenly frosty and unpleasant, so thick Tommy almost gagged. He had reached for the window instinctively, but then his social self asserted itself and his hand froze in midair. If he was the first to acknowledge this event, it could be misinterpreted as an admission of guilt. He couldn't believe he was the only one who had noticed this,

but no one else had reacted. Maybe this happened all the time in their family. Certainly didn't happen in his family. His family didn't even have a word for it. In a desperate attempt for fresh air, Tommy began to inch toward the door. Soon his face was pressed flat against the cool glass. He began to tug at his turtleneck, pulling it over his chin, up over his nose. Everyone seemed so oblivious he began to doubt himself. Maybe he thought it was him. He almost said, excuse me. He almost copped a plea.

He almost said, excuse me, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I'll open the window. And that was when it occurred to him that maybe it wasn't the dog. He studied the car carefully. Dave in the front seat scratching, Morley dozing restlessly beside him. More likely Sam, he thought. Grubby little Sam stuffing himself with those greasy cheesies. And then, with horror, he looked at Stephanie. Impossibly, he thought. Not Stephanie. Please God, not Stephanie. The car, which had less than an hour ago seemed like such a boisterous, happy, family kind of place, was beginning to disturb him. boisterous, happy, family kind of place was beginning to disturb him.

There were chip wrappers all over the back seat and cheesy crumbs and empty pop cans on the floor and CD cases wherever you looked. The whole thing seemed unpleasant and crude. His head sunk lower into his turtleneck. He looked like a ninja. Garbage, he added to the list of things he hated about this trip. Next thing he knew, they were standing on the edge of the highway. The entire family standing in a circle around some sort of rodent. Though it was hard to tell exactly what kind of rodent, because it was a flattish sort of rodent. Flatter than it ought to have been anyway. It might have been something from the hedgehog family.

Something like that. Whatever it was, it was flat, it was furry, and it was dead. And Stephanie was having hysterics because she had been driving when this thing had bolted out in front of their car. That's what she said, anyway, like it was trying to commit suicide or something. At least that's what she said when she could still talk. Now she was just sobbing hysterically. All Tommy could understand was that she wanted to give it a decent burial. And her father standing there pointing at the frozen ground, she made him take it with them.

We can bury it later, she said. Dave double-wrapped its flat, furry little corpse in a plastic bag, and then he placed it in the only sensible place he could think of, in the cooler with a turkey. When they were back in the car, Tommy added roadkill to his list.

When Stephanie leaned over to try to read what he had written, he closed the book and slipped it in his pocket. It was after nine when they pulled into a motel on the far side of Montreal. Boys in one room, said Dave, girls in the other. As soon as they settled in, Dave called his mother. She sounded so excited, he said, when he hung up. She said she's put up a tree for the first time in years. She was baking shortbread. I'm so glad we're doing this. Five minutes later, Morley knocked on the boy's door. Have you seen my stuff, she said. I packed it in a blue athletic bag. When Tommy caught the look on Morley's face, he reached for his notebook.

When Tommy caught the look on Morley's face, he reached for his notebook. The snow began the next morning at midday. It was the second day of Arthur the Dog's upset tummy. Everyone had their window cracked and it was cold as well as rank in the car. First it was just a scatter of snow, nothing at all or nothing worth mentioning. Thin trails and strands of snow whispering and dancing on the blacktop like powder. But an hour later, Dave was hunched over and gripping the wheel, peering at the road, and the road was all white except for the two black tire tracks that he was peering at. The snow driving at him, on the horizontal

almost. It was like he was driving his way across a snow planet, through a snow galaxy. He had the feeling that it was going to go on for a while. He turned to Morley. It's snowing, he said. But Morley was in an unspeakable mood. Finding herself without clothes of her own, Morley had had to borrow clothes from Stephanie.

She was wearing one of Stephanie's tummy T-shirts. She was wearing a pair of underwear that was too small in every way you could imagine. She had been scratching and tugging all morning. Tommy had spent the morning trying to keep his eyes off Morley, but it was like driving by the scene of an accident. Stephanie was no longer sitting beside him. After lunch, Stephanie had announced she was feeling too squished in the middle. She had grabbed the other window seat. Tommy didn't mind. In fact, Tommy was happy for the privacy. This way, he didn't have to keep shielding his notebook from her view. It would not

have been a good thing for anyone if Stephanie had read Tommy's latest entry. He had started that morning after Stephanie and Sam had begun to squabble. The squabble, which had begun over the last package of barbecue potato chips, had escalated into all-out war. Tommy, sitting by the window like a United Nations peace observer, watching in horror as his beautiful 19-year-old girlfriend morphed into a whiny, snit-fitting, foul-mouthed, thinking 12-year-old. Tommy, pulling out his notebook, divides the page into two columns. He writes pros at the top of one column, cons at the top of the other. It was December 23rd. They

were supposed to arrive in Big Narrows that night. By four in the afternoon, they were still in Quebec, and it was apparent to everyone that getting to Cape Breton that night was getting to be out of the question. It was getting dark. You could barely see the forest on the side of the road, just the blackness of the night, the whiteness of the snow, and Dave driving and driving. They'd just passed a huge transport lying on its side in the ditch, flares burning pink around it. They were down to 30 kilometers an hour. A heavy silence had fallen on the car. Tommy was working on several lists at once,

flipping between them as thoughts occurred to him. Ten reasons why you should always spend Christmas with your own family. Ten things to do if I don't die on this trip. Last will and testament of me, Tommy Nolan, killed tragically in a car wreck on this, the 23rd day of December, dead emotionally two hours previous. And then Dave said, I haven't seen a car coming towards us for over an hour. And Dave knew they were going to have to stop. They all knew they should have stopped already.

Do you know where we are, said Dave. It didn't matter where they were. They were going to stop the next place they saw. And if that wasn't soon, they were going to end up in the ditch like the transport they had passed however long ago that was. And that's when they came across Eustace Boisclair's motel. It was Tommy who spotted it, only the office light on. That was a motel, said Tommy, desperately. Eustace peering out the living room window, watching them tumble out of the car, et de trois quatre quatre, collègue, cinq. And then to add insult to injury, Arthur the dog jumping out the back.

Un chien, muttered Eustace. Merde. As if he understood him. Arthur the dog circled three times, squatted and seemed to sigh. Dave, meanwhile, banging on the office door, Eustace ignoring Dave, watching the prodigious dump this dog was depositing in his yard, watching two of the kids, the girl and the younger boy, starting to hit each other, the other boy, the third boy, taking notes like he's some kind of reporter. Eustace put them in rooms six, seven, and eight. Tommy insisted on having a room for himself. Non, said Eustace as they left the office.

Le restaurant s'est fermé. And no ice machine either. Before they go to sleep, Dave buried the turkey in the snow outside their bedroom door. When they woke up the next morning, the morning of Christmas Eve, Dave opened their bedroom door and then slammed it shut again, adrift as high as his thighs in danger of collapsing into their room. He phoned his mother and he told her they weren't going to make it for Christmas. She started to cry, he said. She tried to put a brave face on it, but she was crying. I said she should go over to the Carvers or the McLennans. And she said she had told

everyone that we were coming. She said, how can I possibly face them if you don't bother to show up? They spent the morning digging their car out, creating a mound of snow a good ten feet high in the process. Then they cleared a rough path to the highway, but the highway looked like a ski run. Eustace joined them beside their snow pile and spat on the ground, muttering tabarnush as he scuffed back to the office. Dave was hungry. He imagined the motel office to be a place of plenty, a place with plenty of food and drink, with a fireplace and plenty of wood. At least we have the turkey, he thought sourly. And then he was seized with a spasm of panic. They had buried the turkey when they resurrected their car. The turkey was under a mountain

of snow. Tabarnush, said Dave. Dave retrieved the shovel and began to attack their snow piles, digging like a mountain guide after an avalanche. It was Arthur, the dog who finally pawed his way through the far end of the mound and dragged the bird out. Arthur had hauled the bird 50 yards down the parking lot before Dave spotted him. Eustace watching the bouncing chase from the office window. A smile playing on his face for the first Christmas in years.

He appeared at their door 20 minutes later with a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of Cheezies. Thanks, Dave said. Tommy added Cheezies to his list. It was Sam, grade 7,

the only person in the room still studying French who looked up just as Eustace was leaving. It was Sam who said in a small but audible voice, Merci. The old man looked at Sam sitting on the far side of the far bed and smiled for the second time in an hour. An hour later, when he came back, it was Sam that Eustace wanted to speak to. Si vous allez rester ici pour Noël, vous allez avoir besoin de choses, he said.

Sam nodded. Yes, if they were going to stay for Christmas, there were things they would need. There was an awkward silence. Then Sam screwed up his forehead. Peut-être un arbre, he said. Alors, said Eustace, pointing at the door. And Sam stood up and put on his coat. He turned and looked at his parents. I'll be back in a minute, he said. Monsieur Boisclair and I are going to cut a Christmas tree. He was out the door before anyone could say anything. He was gone an hour. When he came back to the room, he was beaming. His cheeks were red. Come and see, he said. There was a pretty little fir tree leaning by the office door. Sam ran by it and into the office. Come on, he said. Come on. He led them around the reception desk and into the old dining room.

He led them around the reception desk and into the old dining room. The Formica tables pushed against the walls. The chairs stacked beside them. Eustace Boisclare on his hands and knees, fiddling with the stove. An old propane affair that hadn't been run for five years. They never got it going. But they had one of the great all-time Christmas dinners ever. Everyone chipped in.

Tommy fetched wood from the woodlot behind the office. Stephanie split it and built a fire in the dining room fireplace. Morley set up the dining room tables. Sam stuck to Eustace like a shadow. And Dave cooked the turkey. He deep-fried it in corn oil. He used a stock pot from the kitchen for the turkey and an industrial burner from Eustace's shop to heat up the oil. Three minutes a pound.

His first turkey boil. Just before he lowered the bird into the oil, Dave said, well, what are we going to eat with it? Eustace looked at Sam, and Sam translated, and Eustace said, j'ai des choses. By the time they were ready to eat, the Formica tables they had pushed together were laden with food, miraculously produced from next to nothing. Eustace had unearthed a jar of Marie Claire's long-forgotten preserves, and in the absence of cranberries, Morley had fashioned a wild blueberry

sauce. They made stuffing out of bread, bacon, and beer nuts. There was a turnip they boiled and seasoned with orange pop. There's a big bowl of cheesies. And of course, there was the turkey sitting on a platter at the head of the table, golden and crackling and strangely delicious. the head of the table, golden and crackling and strangely delicious. They drank strong tea and homemade spruce beer. And for dessert, they passed around a plate of toffee that Tommy had boiled up using hundreds of little sugar packages. At midnight, everyone was still up. The trucker from Pisaki had joined them. His name was Yvon, and he spoke about as much English as Eustace. But they had moved well beyond language. Yvon had his feet up on the fireplace, playing a harmonica.

Stephanie and Tommy were snuggled on the couch, their arms around each other, listening. Out in the parking lot, Sam was sitting in the cab of Yvon's truck, talking on the couch, their arms around each other, listening. Out in the parking lot, Sam was sitting in the cab of Yvon's truck, talking on the CB, a glass of Eustace's homemade spruce beer resting on the dash. And Eustace was sitting at the table with Dave and Morley, picking at the turkey and smiling. At midnight, Sam came in from the truck and sat down beside his father. You look sad, he said. I was thinking about your grandmother, said Dave. I feel like we let her down. Sam nodded. You wanted to make her happy, he said.

That's right, said Dave. And I think I made her sad. Eustace Boisclair walked by them then and ruffled Sam's hair. Eh bien, he said. We made him happy, said Sam. But Dave shrugged. That doesn't count, he said. They sat quietly for a moment and then Sam stood up. He said it should count. He was sad before we got here. I guess you're right, said Dave. It felt odd to have his son talk to him like this, and he liked it. Before he could say anything, Sam leaned over and kissed his father on the cheek.

He said, I'm going to bed. I love you, said Dave. They made it to Cape Breton the day after Boxing Day. Margaret, Dave's mother, greeted them at the door with shortbread cookies. They stayed four days. It was great fun. It was like a second Christmas. Margaret boasted to all her friends how her family had driven to see her through the worst blizzard in 20 years. On their last night, while they were sitting watching the fire, Dave looked at Sam and said,

I wonder what Monsieur Boisclare is doing tonight. They were planning to stop by the motel on the way home, but on their way home it was late, and the motel was dark, and they kept going. We'll write, said Dave as they drove by, we'll write. And he will write, but not until June. Not until the afternoon he opens the picnic cooler and finds what remains of the flattened road. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That was Christmas on the Road. What a great story. And that's another one that gets at that same idea, right? That perfectly imperfect Christmas, the magic in the mess. I had a Christmas like that last year. It was our first Christmas in our new house. I've talked a bit before about starting a family and how it kind of caught us off guard. It was a bit of a surprise with Eloise, and then her sister Annabelle came along two years later, almost to the day. And so suddenly there were four of us, plus Molly the dog, who was a super bouncy puppy at the time, four of us living in a totally awesome but way too small two-bedroom house. We realized just before Annabelle was born that we were going to need more space. We actually bought our new house the day Annabelle was born. I signed

the paperwork from the hospital bed hours after giving birth. Going to be kind of hard to top that as a birthday present. When we bought that place, we knew it needed a lot of work. It had asbestos. It had a leaky basement. It didn't have a fully functioning bathroom. We knew all of this going in, or most of it, but we didn't know the full extent of it. No problem, we thought. We have lots of time. We'll fix it up, and then we'll move in. We bought the house in 2019, but we didn't take possession for a few months. We didn't take possession until April 1st, 2020. No joke. Of course, a lot changed between November 2019 and April 2020. The entire world changed. We've all heard the stories by now about supply chains and labor and lockdowns. So our renovation, which was supposed to take six months, took two years. We started renovating in January 2021. We were supposed to move in in July 2021. That wasn't

the case. Then we were supposed to move in by Christmas 2021, and then we blew past that deadline. were supposed to move in by Christmas 2021. And then we blew past that deadline. So I was determined to move into that house in the year of 2022. And we did. We moved in at the end of September 2022. The house was still a construction zone, but we made the most of it. It was an adventure. We lived without a kitchen for about six weeks and without a living room for several months. But the basement was done. The basement was done first. So we turned our basement laundry room into a temporary kitchen and a kind of living room hangout zone. We put a TV down there and a countertop and it was actually really cozy. We liked it so much, we kept it like that. But I did want the house to be done or at least close to done by Christmas. We always have lots of people come and stay with us over the holidays. My dad was arriving

on Boxing Day and my best friend Andrea and her whole family were arriving the day after on the 27th. I had been dreaming of Christmas in this house for three years. I wanted the house to be, if not done, then at least close to done. Done enough. I wasn't letting go. Greg, our contractor, was amazing. He and his crew, Sean and Chris, were working hard to get it done for December 24th, but it was complicated by a storm that came in, like that one in the story, from the east. The storm hit our place in Chelsea on December 22nd. There were trees down everywhere and we lost power. We live out in the country, so when we lose power, we also lose water and heat and, well, everything. Andrea and her family were supposed to arrive on

the 27th, but they got caught in the same storm. They were heading to Andrea's parents' place, but just like Dave and his family, they ended up in some roadside hotel. That was okay for the 22nd, but when it looked like they might not make it to her parents' place for Christmas, they decided to risk it and try to make it to us instead. They arrived at our place on December 23rd. They arrived to a house with no power, no heat, no water, no running toilets, and a crew full of people renovating essentially by candlelight. It was total chaos, and it was totally awesome. Greg and his crew got super creative. They used the batteries on their tools and in their trucks.

We got a generator going. We got the wood stove going to keep the house warm. We cooked pasta for dinner on the camp stove, and we devoured Christmas baking for dessert. We ate by candlelight. Greg and his crew got the guest room done, and Andrea and her family had somewhere to sleep that night. It wasn't the Christmas I imagined. It was better. The power came on early the next morning, the morning of December 24th. I woke up a few hours before everyone else, and I went down into the basement to catch up on the mountain of laundry that had piled up during the outage. We still have the TV down there, leftover from when the laundry room had been not only our laundry room, but also our kitchen and

our living room. So I put White Christmas on the TV and I started folding laundry. Annabelle, three years old, was the first one to get up. She pitter-pattered her way down two flights of stairs to find her mom, where she almost always finds her mom in the morning, in the basement, folding laundry. She sat on the floor and started watching the movie while I folded. My godson, Quinn, was up next. He came down to the basement to use the washroom and found us watching White Christmas, so he pulled up a chair and started watching with us. About half an hour later, Andrea and Kyle came down, and then Eloise, and then finally Josh and Molly the dog. By 8 a.m., there were eight of us gathered around the TV in the basement,

watching White Christmas. At some point, I went upstairs and got muffins and coffee and brought them down to the laundry room. For three years, I had daydreamed about our first Christmas in our new home, the house our kids would grow up in, my dream home. This was nothing like I'd imagined. I had imagined Christmas dinner in the dining room. I had imagined Christmas morning by the tree. I had imagined gathering around the fire. by the tree. I had imagined gathering around the fire. I had never imagined gathering around a TV in the basement laundry room. But that's where we all ended up. And it was perfect. We had made it through the storm, both literally and figuratively. And we were with people we loved. It didn't matter if we were gathered around a crackling fire or a washing machine. We were together. At one point, Andrea took a picture.

A new Christmas tradition, she said. The power was back on, so we did end up having a whole bunch of people over that night for dinner in that beautiful dining room. And we sat around the tree the next morning on Christmas morning and we lit a fire. But that's not what I remember. I remember that moment in the laundry room. That will be how I remember our first Christmas in our new house. All these little moments,

it's never the ones you think. It's not the fishing trip or even the fish. It's the fish head. It's the smoke, never the fire. And the smoke is wily and wispy. And the smell of it gets in your hair and on your clothes. And no matter how much you try to duck around the flames, the wind always changes. It always gets in your eyes. We have to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple minutes. Stay with me. That's it for today.

And that is it for this season of Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Season two is done. We're going to take a couple weeks off over the holidays. I hope you do too. But we will be back in mid-January with a whole new season of the podcast. I hope you'll be back too. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you about anything, but especially about what you like and what you don't like about this podcast. It's the only way I can learn. The only way that we can improve is by hearing what works for you, and more importantly, what doesn't work for you. So

please let us know, will you? Don't be shy. Just head over to our website, vinylcafe.com, and you can write us from there or message us through Facebook or Instagram. I hope you have a wonderful holiday. I hope it's filled with friends and family and festive cheer. And I hope you'll join us here in January. Until then, I want to thank all of the people who make this show possible, including the entire team at the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Terry and Debbie and Callie and Sydney O'Reilly. That's a lot of O'Reillys. And of course, I must not forget the wonderful Alison Pinches and Jeff Devine. And I want to thank my good friend Danny Michelle, not just for his amazing theme music, a new version every week this season. If you missed

that, you can go back and listen to all of them over the last 16 weeks. So thank you to Danny for that, but also for being such a good friend and for always being a sounding board for my crazy ideas and just being there whenever I want to chat. And I want to thank Greg Ducloux. He's our recording engineer and he and Louise produce me in studio. He once made an offhanded comment about how I call Danny Michelle my friend and I call him nothing. So you might have noticed that his show credit got increasingly elaborate every week this season. I've got nowhere else to go. This is the last show of the season. I am running out of runway. So today, at the end of this season, at the end of this year, I'd like to thank the greatest human being on the planet Earth, Greg DeCloot.

And I especially want to thank Louise Curtis. Louise and I have worked together for almost 20 years now. When the Vinyl Cafe radio show ended, Louise was crazy enough to stay on working with me, and I am very, very lucky to have her in my corner. In fact, this podcast was her idea. She said, maybe we should start a podcast. And she was right. So thank you, Louise, for that idea and for so many other things. I am grateful. for that idea, and for so many other things. I am grateful. And thanks to you, too, all of you listening. We'll catch up with you in the new year. Until then, Merry Christmas, everyone, and so long for now.