I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [3]
My mother, Georgiana d’Amboise, ca. 1918 (image credit 1.1)
The high point of drear midwinter was the joy of Réveillon! Before Mass on Christmas Eve, families would bundle into sleighs to visit one another’s homes, bearing gifts of food and drink—a pot of beans, smoked fish, preserves, jellies, baked goodies, and wine (Clos des Mouches was a favorite of the d’Amboises). Then everyone gathered for Midnight Mass and Communion, and since it was the custom to fast before receiving Communion, when the final “Ite, missa est”3 was sung, the congregation, their stomachs growling with anticipation, dashed to various people’s homes for an orgy of eating and drinking. Laughter, joy, and bonhomie resounded into the wee hours.
Family farm in Île Verte, in the province of Quebec (image credit 1.2)
A family farm in Île Verte, Province of Quebec, meant short summers, and endless labor. David would work the farm, get Marie pregnant, bring in the harvest, and then disappear into the woods for the winter, to work with a crew of lumberjacks, cutting trees, trimming logs and sliding them down to rest on top of the frozen river. When spring came, the ice would break, the logs would fall into the water, and the lumberjacks would shepherd them down to the mills. The most dangerous part of the job was breaking up logjams; in those days, the average life span of a lumberjack was forty years. Overwhelming was the relief and joy of the family when David returned in the spring. At home, he would likely soon find a new baby along with the spring buds, and the cycle would start again, declaring, as the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda put it, “I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
My mother often recounted to me vivid stories about her parents, Marie and David, and growing up in Canada.
DAVID D’AMBOISE’S FIGHT WITH THE DEVIL
“Your grandfather, mon père—his name was David—was riding his calèche4—it’s like a small buggy—from our farmhouse to go to town. It was fall, a cold morning, and a long way, maybe ten miles in the forest, before you came to anything. There were a few farms along the rutted dirt track through thickets of trees, a tunnel in the great, dark forest of Canada.
“He was about halfway there when suddenly his seat jerked back. A big man had leaped from the forest and landed behind him on the calèche. A black man! ‘I’m here to ride with you!’ the man announced. Terrified, mon père struggled with the horse, which was kicking, rearing, and twisting about. Yelling, David ordered, ‘Get off, get off!’ The man threw his arms around David’s neck, choking him, and they began a terrible fight, buffeting each other and finally rolling off the back of the calèche onto the ground. The horse fled down the road, leaving the two of them punching and clutching in the dirt.
“Now, Jacques, remember, your grandfather worked in the woods with ax and saw. He was not tall, but he was powerful and strong. Soon, he began to get the better of the other and managed to wrest himself away from the terrible embrace. Then, he delivered the black man such a wallop that it knocked him down. My father took this opportunity to turn and run down the road as fast as his feet could carry him, imagining he heard pounding footsteps behind him. Sweating and panting, he prayed to Our Lady for help. Oh, how happy he was when he saw the horse and calèche waiting for him around a bend in the road. He leaped on and galloped off toward town with seconds to