My mother believed in Santa Claus. I was appalled when I learned the full significance of this for I was only eight years old, and too young for the awful responsibility of that knowledge.

Two years before, I had begun to suspect it. My grade one friends had all been anticipating Christmas with boastful tales of the doll that each had ordered from old Santa. "What kind of doll are you getting?" I was asked many times. Finally I responded, equally boastful, with a description of the Eaton's baby doll which was to be mine. Why did I do it? I knew full well that my parents had no money for dolls. Indeed, I was all too aware of the fact that, since my father's struggling garage business had sunk in a sea of depression-induced "accounts receivable", there had been no money to cover even the barest necessities for our family. That autumn, my father had been operating -- and my mother cooking for -- a traveling wheat-harvesting or combining operation, while we four children stayed with our grandmother. Since then, all of us had been crowded into my grandmother's little house on the edge of town.

The approaching Christmas season had found me struggling with two worries. I was desperate to prevent my mother from hearing of my desire for a doll for, even then, I was beset by a vague suspicion that her belief in the powers of Santa might drive her to commit some inconceivable folly in his name. Equally stressful was my agony over what would happen when my friends discovered my doll-less state on Christmas day.

All that I remember about that Christmas are the lies I told. To my mother I said I hated dolls and would never own one. She was too relieved not to take my claims at face value. But my friends were a different matter. For weeks after the holidays they pestered to come to my home after school to play with the doll that Santa had doubtless brought me. Every day as classes ended there was another excuse to fabricate until finally, someone -- perhaps the teacher -- must have told them to drop the whole thing. The entire period cast a shadow over my childhood, and made me forever wary of the complications created by dishonesty.

The other experience seared into my memory occurred the first day of the following September: my seventh birthday. All that previous year of school I had been invited to a number of birthday parties and my mother must have yearned to do something special for me, while repaying hospitality. Sometime during the closing week of August she told me that, if my friends could have a party, so could I. "But how?" I asked. We had been eating adequately from my mother's garden and my grandmother's chickens, but there was no possibility of decorated cake and sandwiches for a dozen hungry little girls. I was told to invite all my friends for the big day. "Please, let's don't, Mama", I begged with a terrible foreboding. "Nonsense!" came the assurance, "We'll get the money for the fixings somehow". But I knew, from daily struggles now buried too deep to recall, that there was no money to get. Not from my grandmother, with her meager funds. And not from my father, with his desperately sought-out and poorly paid machinery repair jobs.

It was easy enough to distribute the invitations but, try as I would, I could not hold back the dreaded day. It dawned and, as I had expected, although there was flour in the house, there was no sugar nor candles for the cake -- and nothing for the dainty sandwiches which had become the order of the day for birthday parties in my circle. My father was to bring the rest of the requirements, my mother said, but he did not come home for lunch. Desperate by then, she sent me to find him beneath the tractor on which he was working. I carried in my hand a precious list: sugar, butter, ice cream, birthday candles and two cans of pink salmon. I remember my father's sorrow and discomfort, then a long wait while he went off somewhere. Finally, the precious horde of money was in my hand. Heart beating wildly, I raced madly to the store and home, with scarcely a moment to spare before my guests began arriving. "Keep them playing as long as you can", my mother urged me, as she rushed to mix the cake -- and so I did. I was emotionally exhausted by the time my mother, eyes agleam with the glory of true belief rewarded, served her beautiful and bounteous fare.

The following spring, in 1933, we moved from the small town. As a last, desperate resort my father had acquired one of the many prairie farms then available for payment of back taxes. In a little model T with an open back, he had hauled his wife and family with their few belongings over a rock-strewn track for what turned out to be a day-long trip to the abandoned farm. My mother, with unconscious cruelty, referred to the farm then and ever after as "Duffy's last chance".

I remember our arrival mostly because of the wallpaper. The yard was strange enough, for it was surrounded by trees that seemed to be peering out of a massive bank of grounded, murky cloud. The cloud turned out to be tumbled piles of round, brown, prickly weeds which I later learned were dried Russian thistles -- blown in by the dust storms of the years before. And there was a rickety windmill, with a pump flanked by what looked like two rusty, half-rounds of a giant barrel, and a leaning barn with a divided door. Beyond these was a large empty pig yard overgrown with weeds. But the house was what captured our attention.

I realize now that it was a painfully small dwelling for a family of seven -- just three rooms and a dirt cellar and tiny attic -- but its size meant nothing to me then. What captivated the four of us children who were old enough to rush into those rooms was the surface of the walls. From ceiling to floor they were covered with what we called the "funnies": colored comic strips from newspapers published before we were born! The wonder of it all was staggering. We raced about, shouting and laughing, as we recognized Orphan Annie and Maggie and Jiggs and their cohorts in adventures from years past. Then my mother appeared at the door. I think that was the last moment of my childhood. Mama, who had been happily expectant during the long drive, walked into the room carrying the month-old baby -- and saw what we were seeing. The play of sheer horror and desolation on her face is with me still.

I didn't know it at the time, but my mother was able to recover and set to work to make a home for us only because of her belief in miracles. In the early days of their marriage, I think it must have been the same with my father. It was probably the last thing they ever had in common. Something wonderful was bound to happen if they could just hang on one more month, or one more year. Prosperity, for the Duffys, was always just around the corner. Increasingly, however, my father's health was deteriorating, and he began to lose hope, finding solace instead in the small miracle of momentary forgetfulness offered by alcohol. That made things very lonely for my mother -- and for my father too, when he came back from town with only half the groceries he had been sent to get. More and more I was my mother's confidant.

Eaton's catalogue became her sole outlet. There was simply no money from any source: no family allowance and little prospect of welfare from a bankrupt farming district recognized as one of Alberta's "Special Areas". These were aggregations of former municipalities that could no longer operate financially because of a total absence of tax revenue. What my parents could not grow or raise on that drought-stricken stretch of no-man's-land, we did without, except for flour, sugar, Roger's Golden Syrup, and a few other essentials obtained on credit from town on the strength of next year's crop. Also there was the occasional shipment of apples, cheese and dried fish from "Back East". So Eaton's became the symbol of all that we needed but could not have.

The autumn that I was ten, I noticed a familiar recklessness in my mother. She confided that she had made out an order to the catalogue and asked for it to be mailed C.O.D. I was to take the order to our neighbors, the Popes, who farmed two miles distant and operated the local post office. And I was not to let the rest of the family know. She had ordered long underwear, sweaters, overalls, overshoes and socks for those of us whose heavily mended hand-me-downs had finally been reduced to rags. And, for herself, there was to be a new housedress! "But how can we pay for the parcel when it comes?" I asked worriedly (for we had been down that road before). "We'll get the money somehow", she assured me. That was when I remembered the terror of my seventh birthday and realized that my mother believed -- not just in the harmless and possibly helpful promise of better days to come -- but in Santa Claus.

The following weeks were a nightmare to me. Finally there came the day when my mother called me in and told me that I was to go over to Popes and ask them for the parcel. I knew she had no money. She made no reference to how the parcel was to be paid for. I recognized the nature of my mission though no words were spoken. Somehow I had to make it possible for her to continue to believe that Santa would come through. Somehow I had to persuade those kind decent people, the Popes, to let us have the parcel even though we could not pay for it. I trudged over, in my worn out runners. I can't remember what my outer clothes were like, but I must have been a forlorn little sight. The details of my encounter are mercifully blacked out from my memory. I only know that I came home with the parcel. I think now that the Popes probably notified my father -- in considerable embarrassment -- and that he somehow repaid them in labor, for he was an accomplished mechanic, and would work until he dropped. (This is not an idle turn of phrase. A few years later he died beneath a car that he was repairing, of a heart attack caused by complications from untreated bowel cancer.)

My mother's housedress was there, among the warm clothes for the rest of us. None of us had ever known her to own a new dress of any kind. She had a younger (working) sister who would periodically send us her half-worn clothes, and from these my mother would construct make-overs for my sister and me. We hated these, for they were invariably of sleazy fabric, darkly colored. But we were used to them. Mama, herself, generally wore men's pants, a habit which she had actually pioneered in girlhood. The idea of a new housedress was something totally new. Periodically my mother removed it from the packaging to admire it, but she never wore it, and, as time passed, we children more or less forgot about it.

A week before Christmas Mama again asked me to hike over to Popes to pick up a parcel. And, once more, she warned me to get it into the house without anyone seeing it. I must have looked stricken, for she said hastily, "It's not C.O.D." I worried anyway, for I had learned my mother was not to be trusted when visions of Santa Claus danced in her head. But Mrs. Pope assured me that the parcel was mine to take. I sneaked it into the house and my mother took it from me quietly and disappeared with it.

I shall never forget that Christmas morning. I and my older sister and brother expected nothing, and it hurt us to see the others all hanging up their stockings. But when morning came there was a filled stocking with a real orange in the toe and a tiny gift for each of us. For a while I could almost join the innocents, and believe once more in Santa Claus. The whole thing seemed like magic. Later that day I asked my mother how she had managed it. She told me that she had ordered two Eaton's Surprise Packages -- one for girls and one for boys. From those two little boxes all our splendid treats and gifts had come! "But, the money?" I asked. She changed the subject.

I might have known. The next day I glanced at the shelf where the housedress in its package had signaled its bright message of better days to come. The moment after my eyes noted the empty space they met those of my father. There passed between us that flash of grief for past irrevocabilities and all-too-realistic future probabilities that only unbelievers can experience. Happily oblivious, my sparkling-eyed, trouser-clad mother bustled from stove to table, between intervals of watching my brothers and sisters playing with their tiny perfect puzzles and games. It was then I knew for sure that Santa Claus could be a cruel taskmaster -- even when his other name is love.