Christmas day 1943 was a day that twelve year old Adam would remember for the rest of his life. There were two reasons for this. The first was that he received his first ever Christmas gift, a pair of skates. The second was that at precisely ten o’clock that morning, he became an uncle for the first time. His brother John’s wife Mary, (one of thirteen women in the small community to bear that name) had given birth to a baby girl whom they promptly named Mary after her mother and grandmother. While the fact that a woman was in the family way, was never talked about except in whispers, Adam, having by now learned something of the “facts of life”, was more surprised by the skates than the birth. 　

Eli, having enjoyed three good fishing seasons in a row, decided that he could now afford to buy his youngest son “something for Christmas”. None of Adam’s siblings had been as fortunate. The previous year several boys of Adam’s age had gotten skates and were the envy of their peers. Even Adam, who joined in winter sports less than most boys of his age, was impressed with the shiny new skates with the boots attached. He remembered that he had once seen, in the house of one of his uncles, a pair of old and rusty skates that had probably hung there for years, but these had to be fastened to whatever footwear one happened to own, and by whatever means available. That afternoon he went to visit his newborn niece and later set out for Otter pond, which just a few days earlier had been swept of the new fallen snow, and made ready for skating. 　

Learning to skate, Adam soon learned, was not as easy as it first appeared. Like many beginners, he laced up the boots and stood up only to promptly fall backwards hitting his head on the ice. Twelve year old boys don’t let a little bump stop them, especially when their friends are watching, and soon he was standing on his new blades for at least half the length of time that he was lying on the ice. In less than a month, he would be skating like a pro.

Two weeks later Adam watched from the family pew as his niece was baptized and thus became a member of the holy catholic church, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. Although little had been said about it at the time, he suddenly remembered that a few months earlier, the baby of another young couple in the community had died without being baptised, and it remained for the father, to place the infants body in a small coffin, carry it up the hill, and bury it outside the cemetery. There had been no priest, no words of comfort for the family and now he understood why. The child had not been a member of the church. Although only a boy of twelve, Adam felt that something about that scene was terribly wrong. He would later learn that this was a common practice in most churches of the day.　

The winter of 1944 was cold and with less snow than usual. The harbour itself was frozen that year and Adam and his friends were able to skate there, although he preferred the fresh over salt water ice. Younger children came too with their homemade sleighs. Most of the boys however, chose to watch Adam and his friends, no doubt dreaming of the day when they too could perform such footwork. As January and February ebbed slowly into the longer and sometimes warmer days of March, parents warned their children to stay off the ice, and Adam hung up his skates and looked forward instead to the pleasures of spring.