THE tablecloth was ironed and spread out over the big mahogany table, ready to be laid for the Christmas dinner the next day.
The six MacBride children had divided up the tasks of peeling potatoes and carrots, lighting the fires and polishing the shoes for Christmas morning Mass according to their age and were washed and dressed in pyjamas and lined up on the living room couch.
Mammy bought the tablecloth the day before off a hawker, a man whose name was long forgotten, but who wore a sheepskin coat, a tweed cap and carried two brown suitcases up and down the terraced streets of Belfast, selling his wares.
Our house on Killowen Street was the first on the right when you turned off the Woodstock Road and the man in the sheepskin coat always got a warm welcome and a decent amount of business when he called at the door.
One of the suitcases contained everything from tea towels to bath towels to net curtains and linen tablecloths. All of them were slight seconds, which is a term you never hear any more and whose availability seems to have disappeared along with the daily use of the tablecloth.
The tablecloth was the whitest of starched Irish linen. In each corner was a rosy-cheeked Santa Claus surrounded by a wreath of holly and a sleigh pulled by reindeer ran along each edge. A wreath of red ribbon intertwined with bells, candles and bunches of mistletoe encircled the picture of a snow-covered Christmas village at the centre. A slight second because you can see where the green screen printing of the mistletoe and holly has run outside the lines.
The silver candlesticks with red candles and some sprigs of holly on the mantelpiece were all that had to be added to decorate the whole dining room for Christmas Day.
The second suitcase the sheepskin coat man carried was full of children’s clothes. But not serviceable jumpers with elbow patches or hard-wearing school trousers, these were clothes for special occasions. In a precursor to the Pippa Dee party, he would lift out each hanger with the outfit covered in cellophane and hang them along the backs of the chairs for Mammy to browse.
There were dresses in every colour with ruffles and matching pantaloons. Lilac gingham, pink and peach satins and cotton prints of flowers and butterflies all had matching tights or lace and ribbon-trimmed socks to go along with them.
I was the best dressed baby in Belfast. I was the youngest, the wee late one as Daddy called me, and there was a six-and-a-half-year gap between my brother Lughaidh and I, with the other five children an average of 18 months apart.
When Mammy would be standing holding a dress in each hand, trying to decide which one to buy, Daddy would say “Ach sure just get her the both of them”. So, for my first Christmas, I had a green velvet dress and red tights - at least that’s what Mammy told me she thinks she remembers it was.
On that first Christmas Eve, I was 10 months old and as we sat in front of the fire with Mammy and Daddy occupying the armchairs and my brothers and sister lined up on the couch of the three-piece suite, I climbed off Mammy’s knee and stood up. Then I started walking for the first time and my brothers started counting: “One, two, three… thirteen!” I had walked thirteen steps across the living room from Mammy’s knee into Daddy’s arms.
I was three years old when Daddy died. Every Christmas Eve of my childhood I would ask Mammy to tell me that story as I spread the tablecloth in preparation for Christmas Day dinner and it would make me feel like Daddy was there with us for those few moments with his arms out, ready to scoop me up and hug me and tell me I was a great girl altogether.
The first Christmas after my daughter was born, I was living in America. Mammy had been there for a couple of months to help me out but went home at the start of December and I was terribly homesick at the thought of not being in Ireland with all my family and friends for Christmas.
In mid-December, a padded envelope arrived from home and when I opened it, the tablecloth was inside. I rang Mammy and asked her why she had sent it to me and she said: “It’s time for you to start telling the story to your own child.”
Every year when the fires are lit and the potatoes peeled and the tablecloth is ironed and spread on the table, I tell my daughter and son the story about how their Mammy walked for the first time on a Christmas Eve.
And I remind them that you don’t have to be in the same room as those who love you to feel them hugging you and hear them tell you that you’re great altogether.
