Home for the Holidays (19 page)

The group returned his greeting.

Rose went to hug her gentle giant of a husband. “I thought you’d be too busy in the barn to come in.”

“The stock decided they’d rather be warm and dry than make a fuss,” he said, “so I finished up early.” He checked his watch. “Vera Humbert called a little while ago and said she’d be dropping by with some quilts for your next guild display over at Town Hall.”

“Keep an ear out for her while I take these folks upstairs, would you, dear?” Rose asked her husband.

Jane and Rose accompanied the group to the second floor, which featured five spacious bedrooms and a library that Rose said had been a study room for her children when they were young.

“We’ve always emphasized the importance of study and
homework,” Rose told Edwina as she brought them into the library. “But with running the farm and caring for the family it wasn’t easy for me to keep track of their progress. It always seemed like one of them wanted to do homework at the precise time that the other wanted to have a friend over to play. We had the room, so I thought, why not turn it into our own little classroom?”

“Wouldn’t you have rather have made this into something for yourself?” Laura seemed rather mystified by the concept.

“Oh, I’ve slipped in there myself a few times, for a peaceful hour of reading or writing letters.” Rose smiled. “Now we keep it for our grandchildren when they stay over, so you could call it a real ‘family room.’”

Samuel joined them to let Rose know that Vera had arrived, and offered to take the group out to the barn where the Bellwoods held their living crèche every year. Before they left the house, Samuel retrieved the group’s coats and outerwear, which Rose had hung on pegs near the fireplace to warm. The family’s dog, a bright-eyed, black-and-white Sheltie named Missy, went with them.

The walk out to the main barn was short but very cold. Inside the large, red-painted building, two rows of straw-filled stalls were home to the farm’s four stock horses and three milk cows. The cows were placidly chewing their cud
and only eyed the group through the wood stall slats, but the big, soft-eyed horses stretched their heads out to have a look and whinny a welcome.

Missy went up to each stall as if greeting the horses, then barked at one of the barn cats, who beat a hasty retreat.

“Our dog would run this entire farm, if I let her,” Samuel confided to the group. “Shelties are wonderful herding dogs, but she tends to herd everything—even me and Rose.”

“How does one herd sheep in these modern times?” Allan asked.

“My modern-thinking sons like using their all-terrain vehicles, but I’ve always preferred riding a horse,” Samuel said after he introduced each of the animals by name. “An ATV can’t sense things the way a horse can.” Samuel chuckled as one of the horses nickered and bumped the farmer’s shoulder with his head. “Or have as big a hankering for sweets.” He fished some sugar cubes from his jacket pocket and gave each of the horses a treat.

A young heifer and two small lambs had been placed in a special, open-front area at the far end of the barn, where Samuel brought the group next.

“Rose and I started to do this when our kids were small, because we wanted them to understand the story of baby Jesus from the Bible,” he told the group. “It is one thing to
read about the Nativity, but quite another to see and feel and hear what it must have been like for the Holy Family.”

One of Samuel’s sons arrived with his two boys. Each brought a shepherd’s costume sewn by his mother for the reenactment. After introducing them to the group, Samuel took the boys down to the special stall the Bellwoods reserved for the living Nativity.

Inside the stall, Samuel had constructed a reproduction of the classic manger scene using real elements from his barn—such as grain bins, water troughs and bales of straw. The centerpiece was a very small, plain hay manger, which held a soft blue baby blanket draped over a fluffy mound of very fine dried grass.

Jane couldn’t help sighing as she looked at the soft, wondering eyes of the baby animals. “We never needed a petting zoo in Acorn Hill,” she told the group. “We would just come over to the Bellwoods’.”

“Where I would put them to work,” the farmer joked. “Jane here is very handy with a pitchfork.”

Samuel explained how at first only the Bellwood children acted out the parts in their living crèche. “They wanted to show their friends, of course, so we allowed them to invite over some kids from school for the reenactment. Those children wanted to join in the fun, and as you know you can never have too many angels or shepherds. Then they went
home and told their folks about it, and before long we had a couple dozen families from church involved in the project every year.” He looked at his grandsons, who had climbed into the stall and were petting the two baby lambs. “This year one of my ewes decided to drop a pair of twins early, so we decided to have them be a part of the crèche.”

“You don’t have any Christmas lights strung in here,” Laura commented. “Don’t you think it would look more festive if you added something like a lighted star?”

“We try to keep it exactly as it was two thousand years ago,” Samuel told her. “The lights we save for the house and our tree.”

“I think it’s marvelous that you do this for the community,” Edwina said as she reached over to pet one of the lambs who had wandered over to the low gate. Missy came to stand and watch the boys with her bright, dark eyes. “How many people come to see the reenactment now?”

“Several hundred, so we’ve started doing repeat performances spread out over Christmas week,” the farmer said. “We also play host to a number of Christian groups who want to celebrate the real reason for the season. This year we’ll be hosting a choir from Wilkes-Barre who will be filming their performance here for a local cable television station.”

“Your fifteen minutes of fame,” Jane teased.

“Rose thought I should wear a suit.” Samuel grinned as he held up the robes his daughter-in-law had sewn. “But lucky for me, the poor shepherds keeping watch over their flocks weren’t able to afford double-breasted jackets.”

The temperature had dropped so quickly that by the time Samuel, Jane and the group had returned to the farmhouse they were all thoroughly chilled. Rose escorted everyone to the living room for a last, warming cup of spiced cider before the long ride back to the hotel in Potterston. She introduced the group to Vera Humbert, who had stayed to say hello to Jane.

“These folks are certainly the nicest group we’ve had this year,” Rose said to Jane apart from the others and glanced at Allan. “That gentleman there knows so much about old houses. I’ll wager he would make a wonderful teacher.”

“I’ve already learned so much listening to him that my head hurts,” Jane admitted with a laugh.

When Allan asked if he could get a glass of water from the kitchen in order to take some of his allergy tablets, Jane decided to go with him.

She passed along the compliment Rose had given him, and then asked, “What made you decide to retire, Allan?”

“I saved a little every week when I was working so that
I could retire early,” Allan said as he took out his pills. “All of our friends were doing it, selling their houses and moving to places like Florida to live on golf courses and spend their golden years in the sun.”

She got him a glass of water from the sink. “But you’re still living here in Pennsylvania.”

“My wife and I aren’t much for golf.” He paused to swallow the tablets and chase them down with the water. “I haven’t done much but putter around the house since I left the firm, but I intend to write a book about architecture someday.”

“Why don’t you write one now?”

“I have this problem. Every time I sit down to do it, my mind goes completely blank and stays that way.” He chuckled. “I was always better at sketching and making presentation models than I was at writing.”

“Have you ever thought about teaching?”

He emptied the glass in the sink. “Mrs. Bellwood was very kind to say that about me, but I don’t see myself as the type who would make a very good instructor.”

“That’s not what I hear from my sisters, and tonight you taught us a lot about this house.”

“Oh, that was nothing.” He made an offhand gesture. “I just like talking about architecture.”

“But that’s what teaching is,” she said, “getting a bunch of youngsters together and talking with them about what
you know. I suspect it would be a lot more fun for you than puttering around the house.”

He seemed taken aback by that. “Maybe it would be.”

When Jane and Allan returned to the group, they found Rose answering questions about her unique decorations.

“I can’t recall ever seeing flowers on a Christmas tree or stars like these, Mrs. Bellwood,” Ted said, nodding toward the paper stars hanging from the beams. “Are they European?”

“Those are Moravian stars, which are traditional Pennsylvania Dutch decorations.” Rose picked up a small, plain-looking wooden box from a collection of them on a side table and opened it. A tiny mechanism inside whirred into life and played the opening bars of “Away in a Manger.” “And these are my caroling music boxes. Neither Samuel nor I are musically talented, so when the children were little, we would wind these up and play the tunes while they sang the songs.”

“My family could have used some of those when I was a kid,” Jane said. She was tone-deaf and as a result could not sing on key, something that confounded her more musical sisters. “They might have drowned me out.”

“These flowers on your tree are real,” Laura Lattimer said as she tested the petal of a rose.

“So are the nuts.” Rose exchanged an amused glance with Jane before she added, “That’s another tradition in this part of the country. The Amish started it, I believe,
because they don’t hold with commercialism of any kind, especially of the holidays. Their Christmas trees are usually decorated only with fruit, nuts and live flowers.”

Vera asked Rose if she had shown the group some of her antique Amish quilts. “Rose started collecting quilts the same time I did,” she told Jane. “It’s how we became friends.”

“We very nearly didn’t,” the farmer’s wife said. “At first, all we did was try to outbid each other at auctions.”

Vera and Rose took the group through the rest of the rooms on the first floor, each of which had at least two quilts on display. Some hung like tapestries, others were folded neatly on standing racks. All were made in traditional patchwork patterns.

“Most of my quilts are at least one hundred years old,” Rose told the group. “Old quilts can’t take much direct exposure to sunlight, so to keep them from fading, I rotate them every other month with others I have safely stored.”

“Vera is quite a quilt historian,” Jane told the group. Earlier in the fall, Fred’s wife had saved an old quilt she and her sisters had inadvertently thrown out, and had given them a great deal of information about its significance.

“After Fred and the girls, they are my passion,” she admitted.

“We try to get her to speak at all the big guild meetings,” Rose said. “I know I’ve learned more from her than from any book I’ve ever read.”

“Well, I’m going to take advantage of that,” Edwina said. “When did people start making quilts, Vera?”

“Quilt-making dates back to ancient Egypt, and knights used to wear quilted padding under their armor to protect their skin, but quilts in America are only about three hundred years old.”

Rose told them of the trip that she, Vera and her quilting guild had made to the Smithsonian the year before, to see quilts made as far back as 1780. “I thought the curator would never let us out of there once Vera identified a quilt for which they had been trying to find a pattern name.”

“What made quilts so popular here in America?” Laura asked. “They’re only bed covers.”

“The first American colonists had a very hard time of it,” Vera told the younger woman. “Fabric, thread and needles were expensive because they had to be brought over from England. Most households produced their own woolen homespun, as cotton wouldn’t become available until after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. Mostly the women of the time made their clothes from imported fabrics like linen and silks, or their own woven wool. They made their quilts from the same materials.”

“I thought the women of that period made their quilts from worn clothing,” Edwina said.

“Scrap quilts made of clothing came much later, during the Civil War, when blockades and fighting kept disrupting
supply lines,” Vera said. “Until the war most women chose to weave blankets rather than make quilts. During the war, even homespun was needed for clothing and any scraps were considered too dear to waste.”

Vera helped Rose take out some of her quilts to show them different styles and techniques. “When quilting became more popular in the nineteenth century, it became a skill young women were expected to learn. You can see from this Ohio Star quilt”—she unfolded a large, blue-and-red quilt with patchwork that formed eight-pointed stars—“how the quilting was in straight lines, or what we call ‘in the ditch.’”

Vera shared her knowledge about the period after the Civil War, when the sewing machine made its impact upon quilting. Women began making scrap quilts from the silk dresses they had once worn.