Dóda's Christmas

I was always scared of sanatoriums.

But they also seemed like a magical place to me.

My mother basically grew up in one, and there lived the sister of my great-grandmother for a short time. I thought about it when I visited the graveyard in September.

The leaves of the old chestnut trees already started to turn rusty. It seems like every year, they start sooner.

I stopped by her grave the way I always did as a child, when we came to water the flowers on the family graves with my grandmother. It's on the corner by the gate, just before the well.

There's a peculiar cobblestone I always balanced on, on one leg as a little girl. It's wobbly, with one edge peeking out of the ground. Now, my feet barely fit on it. I had to stand on my tippy toes.

That way, I was right in front of the black-and-white photograph of Dóda.

My great-grandmother's sister.

I knew Dóda by the image on her grave and by the stories my grandmother told me about her.

My favorite was from a treacherous September day.

I studied her photo for years. Her raven hair pinned high on the top of her head, almost like a Gibson girl but much tighter. I tried to reconstruct it in front of the mirror at home, but it never worked. I ended up looking like the raven died on my head instead.

I used to think I would find more photos of her in Granny's albums, so I dug through them on every occasion. But there was none.

I was convinced they chose that photo for her grave because she was young and beautiful on it.

"If I'd die as a wrinkled old lady, I'd love to have my prettiest photo on my grave," was what I thought as a child.

It took me years to understand that Dóda never grew old, so there were no more photographs of her.

"Death doesn't know how to count," Granny used to say when I asked how people can die so young.

And so I balanced on that wobbly cobblestone with my coat hanging from my arm like my own extension whenever we visited her grave. I did not mind, because I could listen to the story of Dóda's Christmas again.

"In our family, Christmas came once in September," that's how Granny always started.

The weather has been doing that autumn thing. There was rain for days, then sudden warm sunshine, children running around without coats, people thinking summer has returned for one final goodbye, so they left home in their shirtsleeves to enjoy the warmth.

Dóda got caught in one of those autumn changes, too.

She was only nineteen, walking home from work on such a September day. The kind that makes you think the last warm rays of the Sun will stay for weeks, only to get you caught in an icy shower halfway home.

I do not know where Dóda actually worked. Perhaps she was walking home from somewhere else entirely. But in my grandmother's story, she was always coming home in the September rain.

"The weather doesn't care if you forgot your coat at home," she used to say, and made sure I carried one with me even on the hottest school day. "It's better to be safe than sorry. You don't want to end up like Dóda."

"What happened to her?" I asked, even though I knew the story by heart.

"She forgot her coat and got caught in the rain. And when it rained, it poured in those days. She had to walk two kilometers to get home. We didn't have a car in those times, and we didn't have money for a bicycle."

I could not imagine a life without a car. Or even a bicycle. We went everywhere in my father's car.

I imagined Dóda walking home in the cold rain. Her bun flattened, her locks sticking to her forehead. Her arms crossed in front of her chest, shivering in her white ironed blouse, hurrying her steps towards our house.

My parents bought the house where my mother's family used to live. Granny and her siblings were born here, and I always wondered if Dóda ever lived in it. Possibly not, but I imagined she would have visited her sister, my great-grandmother, often. She would have had her favorite chair at the table or her favorite chipped mug she liked to sip her tea from.

I imagined her as someone who liked crooked things because they had history.

I saw her opening the brown gates, and rushing to the kitchen to boil water for tea. Camomile with a spring of rosemary, lemon and honey. Good against catching a cold, Granny taught me.

Maybe she even made a hot foot bath to warm her icy toes.

Granny always made me take a hot bath when I got caught in the rain. I could not imagine how Dóda might have taken one. They had neither a shower, nor a proper bathtub in the house. They washed themselves in buckets.

In my daydreams, Dóda sat beside the fireplace, wrapped in towels, her feet soaking in hot water, chipped mug between her hands.

But despite all, she started with a sneeze.

And quickly, what began as a chill became a fever, then a relentless cough, then a journey to the sanatorium.

Oh, the sanatorium!

How much I heard of it, and how much I longed to live in one.

How romantic it must have been to live in a sanatorium. The white washed walls of long corridors, blinking lights, the starched linen and brass beds. Doctors and nurses checking on you by the hour. The smell of carbolic soap, windows left open for the autumn air.

I saw sweet Dóda in my mind's eyes as she watched the golden and crimson leaves fly in the wind outside her sanatorium window.

She had nothing better to do than daydream. Autumn just started, but she already thought of the holidays to come.

October. November. Christmas.

Dóda told her mother that she planned to purchase a new blouse from the money she had saved from her salary, and she'd wear it first on Christmas Eve. A few weeks before, she had already spotted the most beautiful blouse in the shop window in town.

Her mother, my great-great-grandmother, didn't answer.

"Blue," Dóda said. "The blouse is blue like the flowers of wheat. It has little pearl buttons. I think it will look pretty with grandmother's silver earrings."

Her mother stayed silent.

"Don't you think so, mother?"

Her mother swallowed hard. "You should save your money, darling."

"Oh, it's not that expensive, Mother. I would still have enough for süvegcukor*. But not for oranges. The little ones would be disappointed without them."

Her mother looked away.

Dóda watched her for a moment, noticing her mother's eyes shining in a way she rarely saw before. Her chest tightened with an ache, but she smiled at her anyway.

"It's fine, Mother. I'll buy it when I go home."

"Right, darling, when you come home," her mother repeated faintly.

"Of course. When else?"

Her mother reached for her hand. They were cold and damp.

Dóda squeezed it. "Don't look like that, Mother. The doctor said I need rest. I'm resting."

Outside the window, a gust of wind sent a handful of yellow leaves skittering across the courtyard.

"I'll be home before the leaves are all gone," Dóda said.

Her mother didn't correct her.

That evening, when she returned home, Mother told the others about the blouse. They sat around the kitchen table long after supper had gone cold, listening to the rain and the wind rattling the windows.

"She wants to wear it for Christmas," my great-great-grandmother said. She looked down at her palms, touching the spots that hardened from work.

"She thinks she'll be home by then?"

Mother nodded.

For a while, nobody spoke. Then Father, my great-great-grandfather, cleared his throat. "We could have Christmas before Christmas."

Everyone looked at him bewildered.

"Don't be foolish."

"I'm not being foolish."

"It's only September."

"I know what month it is."

My great-grandmother looked toward the dark window. "Christmas in September?"

"Why not?"

Nobody answered.

Then Mother began to cry.

My great-grandmother, who was just a child then, reached across the table and covered her hand with hers. "She won't make it to December, will she?"

That is why Christmas came early that year.

Father, who used to be an army officer, immediately gave out instructions. He cut down a hen, then Mother cooked Dóda's favorite Christmas dinner from it—hen soup with angel hair noodles and sweet carrots, and stuffed cabbage for second.

The girls were in charge for her favorite desserts: poppy seed bejgli*, gingerbread and szaloncukor*. The boys took care of cutting down the perfect tree and bringing down the wooden and straw ornaments from the attic.

"But where do we get oranges in September?" Mother asked.

"And how do we make it snow?" Stephen, the oldest boy, asked.

Everyone looked at each other for an answer, but nobody knew.

Some days later, Dóda woke from a feverish dream to the scent of pine resin, beeswax, and sweet pastry.

"Is it December already?" she asked, looking out the window. But in the sanatorium garden, she found a crimson wonderland instead of a frozen white one.

Candles lit her room that got decorated with evergreen branches, her favorite wooden figurines and straw ornaments in the shape of stars, goats, horses and snowflakes.

There was a small Christmas tree standing in the corner— white, red and gold, with wrapped szaloncukor sparkling in the candlelight.

And under it?

Dóda's favorite meals, süvegcukor, the wheat-flower-blue blouse and beside it something round wrapped in paper.

Dóda pushed herself up in her bed, and reached for the paper ball, carefully unwraping it in her lap.

"An orange. How?" she asked with tear-filled eyes.

"Let that be the secret of me and Jézuska*," Father winked.

Dóda smiled and shed a tear with her sleeve. "You see? I told you. December was always too far away."

Everyone laughed. Dóda sang with flushed cheeks, and for an hour nobody thought about December.

Eventually, Dóda asked Mother:"Will we still do this again in December?"

Mother nodded. "Of course, darling," and planted a kiss on her forehead.

By December, the snow had finally come, and Dóda was released from the sanatorium.

A sparkling blanket covered the roofs, the bare branches, the road leading to the house. Everything was white just like she imagined it.

When Christmas Eve arrived, my family decorated the tree, as we had for generations.

The straw animals came down from the attic again. The little wooden figures found their places among the branches. The candles were fixed into their holders.

The same soup simmered in the porcelain pot. The same stuffed cabbage steamed on the table. There was poppy seed beigli, gingerbread and süvegcukor beneath the tree.

They held each other's hand and said a prayer.

Then Mother placed an orange on Dóda's plate.

"That Christmas, everyone wore black," Grandma told me.

When I was little, I did not understand that. I thought Christmas had simply came twice that year.

How lucky Dóda was, I always thought.

I didn't understand why Granny's voice always changed when she reached to December in her story. I didn't understand why there was an empty chair at the table. Or why Mother placed one orange on Dóda's plate.

I only knew that nobody ate it.

It took me years to finally understand.

At least, Dóda saw the December snow.

I was always scared of sanatoriums.

Maybe that's why. You could be sent into one, but you might never came back. Or not for long.

But you could also wake from a fever and find Christmas in your room while the leaves outside were still turning red.

As a child, I always thought that was magic. How I longed for a Christmas in the sanatorium in September.

Now I see the real magic was never the sanatorium.

It was the people who loved Dóda enough to bring her Christmas three months early. And still, they couldn't give her Christmas twice.

This story was inspired by Dóda, the sister of my great-grandmother whom I only knew from her grave photo and from my grandmother's stories.

Dóda is a nickname, but since it's so unique even in Hungary, I wanted to keep this name for the memory. It's pronounced something like "Doh-duh or Doh-daw".

I don't remember much from the stories my Grandma used to tell me about her, so I reached to my imagination to fill the blanks.

Back then, the seasons were seasoning properly, and getting caught in a cold September rain could be much more serious than it sounds to us now. Pneumonia was not something people could simply expect to recover from.

I like to think Dóda would have liked the Christmas we gave her.

*Süvegcukor is a traditional Hungarian Christmas candy that is usually translated as fondant candy or Christmas fondant candy. It's a cone-shaped lump of crystallized/fondant sugar.

*Szaloncukor is a Hungarian Christmas candy wrapped in colorful paper and hung on the tree. It literally translates to salon candy because it was served in the salon room.

*Bejgli is a traditional Hungarian Christmas roll, filled with poppy seed for abundance or walnuts for protection.
You can read more about it here.

*Jézuska or little Jesus: In Hungary, traditionally the baby Jesus brings gifts for the children on the 24th of December, and leaves them under the Chrostmas tree.