When I was a boy what I wanted most for Christmas was a Johnny Seven O.M.A. (One Man Army) toy.
I was a military brat living in CFB Greenwood, N.S. and it was the life I knew. It was 1965, and I remember well from that summer the house on the block that had the first colour television. When Christmas rolled around I just had to be the first kid that had a Johnny Seven toy.
We were poor. My father was a sergeant in the Air Force. My mother was smart and a hard worker but she could not find a regular job on the base. But in the fall she picked apples in the famed Annapolis Valley orchids to make extra money for Christmas so her three sons would never be left wanting.
I was the youngest and she knew her little boy wanted this special toy.
When Christmas morning came there was this huge wrapped box for me under the tree. I remember praying it was my Johnny Seven. It was. I was to be the envy of every kid on the block.
Half a century later my mother has long passed but that memory still holds. I use it to inspire myself to get whatever special toys my grandchildren would want. They are very young now. Andy is two, while Elizabeth is just six months old. I often need help from my daughter Darlana, their mother, in picking the right things.
Children need to play, need to dream, and dream big.
Andy will get a vinyl copy of the new Who album, and Elizabeth will get a super secret gift she can open when she’s 18. This will include a letter.
I will tell her all about another Elizabeth. She was my mother.
In any house, mothers are the truest heartbeats. At Christmastime, or in any of the other major holidays of non-Christian faith, they dictate all that is good and special; a spark igniting the spirit of giving, of love so powerful, it will last a lifetime. And this year that spirit is being lovingly passed on, just the way it was meant to be.
Johnnie Bachusky is the editor of the Innisfail Province.
