My son has always had a remarkable memory. Even at nursery, he could recite every single line from the scripts for the holiday plays, which made it a mystery right up to the last day what costume hed be wearing. Children often got ill, and since he knew all the parts, he was the understudy for almost everyone.
For the Christmas play that year, my five-year-old landed the role of a cucumber. I only found out the night before his big performance. With a sudden jolt of inspiration, I headed out to buy a green T-shirt and some coloured card, then spent most of the night sewing a pair of matching green shorts and gluing together a light-green hat made from card, complete with a delightful stem made from wire wrapped in green fabric.
His dad was the one taking him to the play in the morning, which, frankly, didnt fill me with much confidence. So, before work, I gave a full run-through on how to kit our boy out and secure the hat properly.
In the middle of my hospital shift, I got a call from the nursery teacher, her voice tremblingturns out the child slated to play the main part had come down ill, so tomorrow, my son would play the Gingerbread Man. My first, slightly panicked, question: Do you reckon the Gingerbread Man could wear a cucumber costume? There was a long, meaningful silence on the other end of the line.
I phoned my husband at work to update him on the performance emergency. With altogether too much cheer (which in hindsight should have set off alarm bells), he assured me it wasnt a problem: hed rope in two of his mates from the hospital, a pair of resourceful surgeons, and this dream team would sort out a new costume at our house. My instincts should have been screaming at me by this point.
Later that evening, worn out after a long day, I rang home around nine oclock. My son picked up, announcing theyd bought a white T-shirt, Dad was glueing yellow card, Uncle William was cooking dinner, and Uncle Edward was in fits of laughter.
An hour later, my son reported he was off to bed, that Uncle Edward had cut a big yellow circle from the card and was drawing eyes on it, Uncle William was opening a jar of pickled onions, and Dad was hiccuping with laughter.
By midnight, I called again. My husband told me William and Edward were utterly exhausted after making the Gingerbread Man and had crashed on the sofa. And then there were some, as he put it, little details: by accident, William had glued the big yellow face lopsided onto the white T-shirt with superglue, and when Edward tried to peel it off, the shirt tore. So, theyd ended up stitching it (with medical silk thread, no less) onto the green T-shirt from the cucumber costume.
Apparently, it looked marvellousthough I struggled to imagine how. Not to mention, the Gingerbread Man had a hand-crafted smile with thirty teeth, though theyd run out of white card and two teeth were missing. Never mind, I said, with thirty teeth, no one will notice! So, I tried to put it out of my mind and get on with my shift, mildly reassured my son would at least be the best-dressed Gingerbread Man in all of Cheshire. Meanwhile, Edward, whod been painstakingly cutting out cardboard teeth, was apparently snoring in an armchair.
Still, as the night dragged on, doubts crept in. The next morning, desperate, I begged the head doctor for just an hour off to at least make it to the play.
I made it a little late. Peals of laughter and gasps echoed from the hall as I quietly pushed open the door.
There, by the Christmas tree, my sonthe Gingerbread Manwas trying valiantly to bounce. A gigantic, bright yellow, moon-shaped face hung on his chest, stretching from chin to knees. The eyes on the puppet face looked in opposite directions. Three long, horizontal stitches ran above the eyes like worry lines on the brow of a world-weary gingerbread man, complete with a wide, gaping mouth full of thirty card teethexcept, of course, for the front two, which were missing.
The result, frankly, was a geriatric, well-worn, gingerbread man who looked as though he’d just been released from an unusually strict British boarding school, perhaps having sampled the sherry more often than he ought. To top it all off, the ensemble was completed by the cheerful green card cucumber hat, complete with fabric-wrapped wire stem.
Just then, my son began reciting his poem with all the confidence in the world: Where on earth could you ever find, another one quite like me? (There was more, about how youd have to search in fairy tales and Christmas plays, but nobody was hearing a wordhis teacher had sunk to her knees, the hall was a sea of giggles and tears.)
Looking back, I realised that sometimes the best memories come from the muddles and the botched jobsthe effort, the camaraderie, the laughter around the kitchen table. My personal lesson? When you trust three English surgeons with a childrens costume, expect the unexpectedand know, deep down, that your son will never forget being the most extraordinary Gingerbread Man in town.
