Christmas Sleigh
Summer Hanford
Imagine you’re a little girl, about four, and you live on a dairy farm in Upstate New York. Not a dairy farm like today, with hundreds or even thousands of cows who walk themselves into giant milking machines, but a farm with a hundred head of adorable brown Jersey cows, with gorgeous big brown eyes and gentle dispositions.
Being a little girl, you don’t have any chores yet, except taming the wild kittens every year so they can get their vaccinations and, really, that’s not a chore. Your big brother has chores. He goes to the barn every morning and brings back fresh milk with cream on top, and brings in firewood for the big black stove that heats the house.
Also, being a little girl, you don’t think about how (even to this day) you walk on tiptoe when you go barefoot, because the two hundred-year-old farmhouse in which you live is heated only by the big black stove and the floors are like ice. Nor do you understand that the giant icicles outside the windows, especially the windows near the stove, mean your parents will have to spend a lot of money to insulate the old farmhouse so they can put in baseboard heat someday. Instead, you just enjoy the giant icicles and watch them grow in the Upstate New York winter.
Now imagine your dad has two great big old draft horses, Sandy and Silver, who’ve worked together so long, they walk side by side even when loose in the paddock. Every December, Dad hitches them to a sleigh and you and your big brother and your mom climb in, in coats, hats, scarves and mittens. Dad drives the team up to the woods, because you live on an old dairy farm, and so you have woods.
In that woods, interspersed with taller, scraggly pines and deciduous hardwoods, like the sugar maples from which Dad’s been collecting sap to boil into maple syrup, are cute little conifers. The sort you use for Christmas trees.
Once you reach the woods, you all get out and wander among the trees. The perfect pine is selected, and Dad chops it down. He bundles it onto the back of the sleigh, and Sandy and Silver pull you, your big brother, your dad and mom, back to the house. And it’s no trouble, because they’re great big old draft horses, and they hardly even notice the extra weight of the tree.
A tree Dad will set up in the living room, so you and your big brother can help your mom decorate. All the Christmas ornaments and tinsel will come out, carried up from the basement in old cardboard boxes. Every ornament familiar. Each one remembered from the year before.
And that, my friends, is my best Christmas memory. I don’t recall a single gift I received when I was under the age of six, and after that only vaguely, but my parents gave us the best Christmas gift any parents ever can, happy Christmas memories.
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About Summer Hanford
Summer Hanford writes Regency, fantasy and Pride and Prejudice variations. Starting in 2014, Summer was offered the privilege of partnering with fan fiction author Renata McMann on her well-loved Pride and Prejudice variations. More information on these works is available at www.renatamcmann.com. Additionally, in 2016, Summer was lucky enough to be asked to join Austen Authors, a great place for fans to get more Jane Austen. To explore Austen Authors, visit www.austenauthors.net.
Summer is currently working on her solo Regencies, writing with McMann, providing content for, creating and managing websites, and is a fantasy and science fiction faculty member at AllWriters’ Workplace and Workshop, LLC., an international creative writing studio. She lives in New York with her husband and obligatory, deliberately spoiled, cats. For more about Summer, visit www.summerhanford.com.
Read Summer’s latest release, The Duke’s Widow.
