I flung back my long blond braids and stood to attention beside my Grade 3 desk. As quickly as Miss Irwin spun the hands of the cardboard clock, I called out the answers. “One o’clock. Six o’clock. Half past 10. Two o’clock….”
Miss Irwin smiled. “Very good indeed, Alma. You may be seated. Next please….”
I could tell time. Now I knew exactly what I wanted for Christmas.
When the bell rang that grey November day, I raced down the steps of our country schoolhouse and scrambled into the horse-drawn van.
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I usually rummaged through my black, tin lunch kit for leftover jam sandwiches to eat during the mile ride home. Sometimes I played a game of I Spy with the other kids in the van, but not today.
I was so preoccupied with my thoughts I never even heard the driver call “whoa” to the horses as they pulled up beside our drafty farmhouse on the Canadian Prairies. I squeezed out the narrow back door of the van and ran into the house.
“I can tell time,” I announced to my mother, who was frying sizzling pieces of salt pork in a cast iron pan on the McClary wood stove. “Where’s the Eaton catalogue?”
She smiled at me sadly. She knew, even as I did, that my expectations were far beyond the family means.
She told me I could find the catalogue beside the rocking chair in the front room.
I tossed my tattered jacket on a nail behind the door and kicked off my scruffy, four-buckle overshoes.
The Eaton mail order catalogue was our annual Christmas wish book. Thumbing through its dog-eared pages, I found just what I was looking for — the dainty oval wristwatch. Instead of a plain black strap, it had a gold expansion bracelet. Using the stub of a pencil, I circled the wristwatch, just so my mother would know exactly which one to order.
Now all I had to do was wait — and pray.
“Please God, You know how much I’d like that watch, the one with the gold expansion bracelet. Dad says the crops haven’t been very good lately and the hens don’t lay much in winter, so Mom can’t sell very many eggs, but I know You can get it for me somehow, God.”
Come Christmas morning there was a parcel under the tree that had distinct possibilities in terms of size and shape. I waited to open it until last, savoring the anticipation. When the small, neat package turned out to be a fat box of crayons, I tried hard to hide my disappointment, if only for Mom’s sake. She knew how much I wanted a watch.
Grade 4, Grade 5, Grade 6, every year I waited in vain to find the wristwatch under the branches of the scrub oak that served as a makeshift Christmas tree.
Then came Grade 7. Far too grown up to circle things in the Christmas catalogue, I made a list of suggestions that I hoped would be of some help when my mother sent off her next order to Eaton’s.
I carried her envelope to the post office on a bright frosty day late in November. I could not resist taking a peek before I slipped in the money order. Mom had indeed ordered a watch, but not the one for which I had yearned and prayed. She had ordered a watch with a plain black strap, and who could blame her? It was, after all, cheaper by $1.49. In those days that represented the price of several dozen eggs.
As the postmaster hoisted the bags of mail into the train baggage car that day, I wished I had torn up the entire order form. After waiting so long, settling for second best was just too disappointing to contemplate.
On Christmas morning there was a pair of grey woollen mittens and a book wrapped in used paper plus one other parcel that caught my eye. Could it be the watch? I could feel my hopes rising. But what if it has a plain black strap?
My mother was looking at me intently with her dark brown eyes.
With mixed feelings I tore off the gift wrap and gingerly opened a blue velvet box. There inside was an oval wristwatch — with a gold expansion bracelet.
Tucked in beside it was a familiar note: “Dear Customer: We regret that we were unable to fill your order as requested. We have therefore substituted with merchandise of equal value or better. Goods satisfactory or your money cheerfully refunded. The T. Eaton Company Limited.”
Mail order policy? Mere coincidence? Perhaps, but I was convinced back then, and have believed ever since, that answers to heartfelt prayer are never second best. The oval wristwatch with the gold expansion bracelet wore out years ago, but God is still reliable.
