One
I knew as soon as I lied to my mother, the night would turn out badly. Guilt sat in the pit of my stomach like a truck stop burger as I watched the lights of my grandparents’ minivan fade down the driveway. I am not by nature a liar, but if I didn’t get a couple hours to myself, I was going to end up headlining the local news. So I did what any devoted daughter would do and faked a migraine.
The holiday season brings on overachieving mania in my family every year. Preparations begin on All Saints’ Day and reach toxic levels of holiday cheer by Thanksgiving. My mother festoons every room in our sprawling farmhouse with porcelain villages, twinkling lights, and creepy animatronic elves. Grandma turns the kitchen inside out crafting mince pies from actual meat, building gingerbread house replicas of famous castles, and challenging Switzerland to a chocolate production duel. My sister composes a holiday newsletter that puts many glossy magazines to shame. The year I was born, my grandfather added a dozen reindeer to our herd of cows and my father built a sleigh for them to pull through the center of town.
None of the preparations are all that overwhelming on their own, but set them to spin under the same roof and you’ve got holiday overload. The worst thing is the way everyone insists how much more I will enjoy the holidays when I have a special someone to share them with or, better still, a few kids of my own. I feel like I’m barely old enough to add a husband and kids to the bottom of my Christmas list, but everyone looks at me as if my stocking were full of coal when I sit down to the holiday table year after year unattached.
Thanks to my bald-faced fibbing, I was not helping the rest of the family set up for a fund-raising breakfast scheduled for the next morning at the grange hall. My grandparents met at the event over fifty years earlier when my grandfather came in second to his future father-in-law at the pancake-eating competition. Ever since then, our family has donated our syrup to the festivities. The firefighters’ auxiliary, the Sap Bucket Brigade, counts on us to deliver the syrup and set it out on all the tables the night before the fund-raiser. I told myself they didn’t really need my help. Besides there was some cleaning up to do in the sugarhouse after everyone had tromped through it fetching squat jugs of syrup for the breakfast.
The sugarhouse is my favorite part of the farm, especially at this time of year, when it is the only place free from tinsel and plastic garlands. With Thanksgiving less than a week away and holiday fervor gripping the household, I was hiding out there as often as I could. I slipped into a down vest, grabbed a bottle of Shiraz, and scooted on out the door. The sugarhouse sits back from the farmhouse far enough to be convenient to the trees but close enough to get to when the snow’s antler deep on a nine-point buck. I crossed the quiet yard, the three-quarter moon shining its light down through the bare branches of the trees, and felt the lumpy frozen earth beneath my feet. The security light above the sugarhouse door winked on as I approached. Once inside, the familiar sights of the evaporator and the unadorned rows of syrup bottles drove any holiday stress right out of my mind. I sat the wine on the workbench, pulled the cork, and grabbed a glass from a cupboard. After pouring myself a healthy swig, I flipped on the radio, then grabbed a broom from the closet. Half an hour later all the dirt was gone and everything was tucked back into its place.
I sat on a stool and leaned back against the workbench to enjoy the tranquility. Taking a sip of wine, I scanned the room, a feeling of pride welling up. Over the past five years I had convinced my family to turn our hobby into a business. We’d modernized equipment, begun using hoses instead of buckets to collect sap, and started selling over the Internet. Just this past summer we’d added on a small shop to sell our own maple products and maple-themed gift items. The next thing on my list of improvements was organic certification. With a little luck we would have it in time for the upcoming sugaring season.
It hasn’t been easy to get my family on board with the new ideas. After four generations making sugar, they feel like our system doesn’t need any tweaking. The farm has been in the family for over a hundred years so convincing everyone to try something new has been an epic battle. My age, birth position, and gender haven’t helped. Being the baby of the family may have its advantages but it hinders you when it comes to garnering respect. My sister, Celadon, and my brother, Loden, just open their mouths and our elders start stringing those pearls of wisdom into necklaces. Me, I have to repeat everything at least a dozen times and then provide written documentation to back up my claims.
As I sat my wineglass back on the bench, I heard footsteps on the porch. The closest neighbor lived over a mile away, and I should have heard any cars coming up the drive. I slid off the stool and slipped toward the window. I was three feet from it when I saw the face. A tawny, furry, feline face filled the window. I took a step back, then another. The large amber eyes peering at me belonged to no tabby cat out for a night of carousing. My heart hammered in my chest. All my life I’d heard rumors of big cat sightings, but like most people, I had never taken them seriously.