Happy New Year

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate

Merry Christmas

May your troubles be few and may you enjoy great company

Three Word Wednesday -Sean the Leprechaun~ A Christmas Story

I was going across some of my beloved mother's papers yesterday, (the first time since she died) and I found a surprising thing she too had written about the Christmas that stuck in my mind when I was young. I think it's my Christmas present from her and now you can read it.My story is included in my new paperback and e-book Visions of Sugarplums. http://amzn.to/1ROfgLL

In the story  she wrote of my imaginative nature;  she also included details I forgot.  It  did happen as she wrote them (in true fact I love her story)so I am going to give you another Christmas treat and post my mother's story for you. The only change to her writing? The Three Word Wednesday words included. The twist? It begins with a leprechaun. Yes, you read that right. Read on and enjoy. 

Three Word Wednesday -Sean the Leprechaun~ A Christmas Story

Savage, adjective: (of an animal or force of nature) fierce, violent, and uncontrolled, cruel and vicious; aggressively hostile, (chiefly in historical or literary contexts) primitive; uncivilized, (of a place) wild-looking and inhospitable; uncultivated, (of something bad or negative) very great; severe; noun: (chiefly in historical or literary contexts) a member of a people regarded as primitive and uncivilized, a brutal or vicious person; verb: (especially of a dog or wild animal) attack ferociously and maul, subject to a vicious verbal attack; criticize brutally.

Tense, adjective: (especially of a muscle or someone's body) stretched tight or rigid, (of a person) unable to relax because of nervousness, anxiety, or stimulation, (of a situation, event, etc.) causing or showing anxiety and nervousness; verb: become tense, typically through anxiety or nervousness, [with object] make (a muscle or one's body) tight or rigid.

Vengeful, adjective: seeking to harm someone in return for a perceived injury.

Sean the Leprechaun~ A Christmas Story

             Sean was leprechaun. Actually to be completely honest he was just a stuffed doll. He’d been in the family for years and the children had never been allowed to play with him. He was hung in the window by a safety pin through his hat. Because of the children’s love of fairy tales over the years many tales had been made about him consequently the children began to believe he was a real leprechaun. In appearance he was quite ugly; about twelve inches tall; had long spindly legs, a sharp pointed nose and a tense disfigured face that had aged and discoloured to an ugly mahogany.

         For some unknown reason every time something bad was going to happen we would find him turned inward. I always blamed it on air currents but the children insisted he was warning us and that the pin hurt. Sean had tried to warn us when we travelled out to British Columbia that something was wrong by turning around in the car window and then we’d blown a tire. After that he also turned around when the car almost went over a cliff. My oldest son joked that the leprechaun was vengeful and the younger kids believed him.

            My husband insisted that the leprechaun wasn’t warning us Sean wasn’t vengeful or a savage, but a doll. That the tire had just blown and he’d made a mistake in geography getting too close to a cliff; but my young daughter, Sheilagh as she said her prayers that night said ...”and please tell Sean will get him a new suit if the car doesn’t break anymore.”

She then said to me. “We can, can’t we Mommy?” I reassured her we could; then realized he was faded. I promptly forgot about it.

                 Over the next few months we settled in and Sean was installed in the front window with a beautiful view of the mountains but he insisted on facing in. nothing went right the job my husband was offered caused allergic reactions and asthmatic attacks and then the old injury that had caused us to relocate reared again and my husband was hospitalized.

               During a family conference I explained how there wouldn’t be expensive presents and my oldest daughter blurted out to the younger ones there was no Santa and I had to admit that was true. My youngest daughter insisted with the surety of youth a child there was a Santa. That in fact she believed Daddy was sick because I hadn’t made Sean the suit I promised him and then of course she started crying about not getting a Chatty Cathy. She finished all of this with tears flowing down her face.

           The next day I took Sean down from the window and searching throw my scrap cloth and wool box. I found enough to make a new suit.

When the children came home from school they noticed right away that Sean was missing. Wanting to surprise them I told them Santa’s elves had the flu and Sean had gone to help him in return for a new Christmas suit. This made them happy and reaffirmed their belief in Santa. Even though they somehow understood even Santa didn’t have a lot of money either. They not only accept this idea but demanded bedtime stories of Sean and Santa.

         That Saturday I turned on a Santa television program for them and imagine my surprise when I heard Santa say,” All my elves are down with the flu and my friend Sean has come to help me.”

The camera panned to a doll that was the spitting imagine of Sean.

Muttering “I don’t believe it I went upstairs to look for Sean in my scrap basket. I took everything out piece by piece but I couldn’t find Sean. Following a sleepless night after sending the children to school I wondered where I could have lost him. I searched again and found Sean under a sock that needed darning. How I missed him the first second and gazillion time I don’t know.

         The next day my husband was released from the hospital came home and getting a licence shot a deer for Christmas dinner even though it hurt him to kill such a magnificent animal. We were happier. there was food for Christmas dinner.

Christmas morning Sean was back where he belonged in the window facing out, in his brand new suit. The doorbell rang at five a.m. and I found gaily wrapped presents outside the front door with the children’s names on them.  There had been a light snowfall overnight but the only tracks were hoof prints and two straight lines like those of a sleigh.

         We all stammered “What? Where? Why? How?”, as we looked  at each other in wonderment at the lack of human footprints and the two long lines where something big had rested.

The parcels were opened and to sounds of delight as it revealed a Chatty Cathy doll cuddled tightly, a pair of figure skates, a Bowie knife and a make-up mirror, a large toy crane and a model airplane.

         I found out later that the toys were supplied by an elderly lady who befriended the neighbourhood children and who had given all the children a Christmas party’ but neither she, nor anyone else could explain the lack of human footprints. Sheilagh was sure that she was Mrs. Santa Claus and had brought Sean back with her and the presents.

        Was Sean really a magical leprechaun? I am no longer sure. some things maybe coincidence but others have no explanation . The only thing I’m sure of its that it was the best Christmas ever.

THE END

I hope you enjoyed my mother's story.  My daughter now has Sean and has promised him another new suit not bad since his last one was so long ago.

Merry Christmas!! Happy Holidays!!

Whatever you celebrate enjoy. I’ll be back here to my blog on December 30th.

Dreams Can Kill & Visions of Sugarplums now available in paperback

Celebrate the season with a paperback book for  a gift or for you

My books Visions of Sugarplums 



http://amzn.to/1ROfgLL


& Dreams Can Kill


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Are now available in ebook and paperback

HappyThanksgiving To All My America followers and friends

The Second World War and my Dad #Howwillyouremember

Re-post from from November 2011

 

     My father was a history buff and his favourite field of studies were strategies of war. He often told us stories of Canadian battles and other historical battles. Canada was at war when he was a pre-teen and during his teen years. He trained at school every day as part of his studies, to go to war. A crack shot, my dad excelled at all to do with war; after all his older brother had become a Special Forces soldier and his sister also taking part working as a CWAC and was aboard a ship. He wanted to go one day too. His brother came home, drank and told of fun with comrades, but never really talking of the troubles of war. It all sounded wonderful to a lonely boy. His mother worked long hours in the airplane factory, so my father too wanted to do his part. So he went down to the local recruiting centre and signed up to muster off to war while his mother worked one of her very long shifts at the factory.

     His father and stepfather were both fighting overseas. He was thirteen years old, but very big for his age. Looking at him he may have appeared to the recruiter to be sixteen, but no one would have taken him for only thirteen years old.

     My grandmother meanwhile frantically tried to find out where her son was, getting nowhere. She told the recruiter her son was only thirteen years old and he didn’t believe her. Maybe, it was just he was worried about his mistake; after all he had just sent a thirteen year old child to war, but he demanded she bring back proof. My grandmother had moved several times since my father was born and she was not sure where she had put his birth certificate. She found it after frantically searching and brought it back to them, only to be told that my father had been trained and shipped off to Halifax to board a troop ship which would take him overseas. My grandmother didn’t hesitate she boarded a train to Halifax went straight to the harbour. She told them proudly how her son fought overseas, her daughter was a CWAC and that she herself worked in an airplane factor, therefore they could not have her thirteen year old son, not yet anyway. They demanded proof that my father was thirteen and she produced it. The ship then sailed, without my father who went home. That ship my father always told me went to sea, without him and later a German U boat  torpedoed them , all about 200 souls or less aboard died. (I’ve been trying to trace the ship, but I'm not sure of the name only that it sailed from Halifax.)

     My father was always grateful that he wasn’t on board that ship. He mourned the loss of those lives and taught his children to remember those who had given their lives for our freedom and peace we enjoy. As he said he could have been one of those who perished and then we might not have been here. We appreciated that and always remember how fortunate we were, to have our father.

      Less than a year later my grandmother had a knock at her door receiving a telegram that her oldest son  had been listed as missing in action and presumed dead. A soldier in his unit that was wounded came a month later and told her he was sure her son was dead; but that he had died valiantly saving many of his troops. My grandmother mourned, devastated that she had saved one son to lose another. After three long months she received a phone call and rejoiced her son was alive. He had been in a coma for three months, injured so badly they had not been able to identify him as he had lost his dog tags. They had thought they might lose him from his injuries; but he survived. He came home for some time healing and then went back to war; just before hostilities had ended.

©Sheilagh Lee  November 9, 2011

We shall never forget their sacrifice. We shall remember.

Happy Independence Day Weekend

To my American followers on July 4th, 2014 on the occasion of America's 238th Birthday of  Independence Day


Have a great holiday and enjoy the fireworks 

and enjoy..

Ray Charles singing America The Beautiful

and Mariah Carey singing The Star Spangled Bannner