Emu’s aftertaste lingers even after all these years
Fortified wine, some tall tales and a misunderstood request remind our reporter of family
This is part of a Star series reflecting on holiday celebrations.
When I think of Christmases past, I remember the taste of Emu. Not the bird, but the syrupy Australian fortified wine.
And like the wine, the memory it conjures up is bittersweet, and followed by regrets I’ve only recently come to terms with.
I don’t remember why it had to be Emu but, at some point during Christmas dinner, my grandfather, Roy Shortt, would stop the jet-like hum of slightly drunken conversation filling the kitchen and living rooms of my aunt’s house to pour everyone in my extended family a shot. And we’d raise our glasses and toast his father, my great-grandfather Anson.
As I recall, my grandfather was in his 80s when he started doing this. At the time, I thought he wanted to set up a tradition and have us remember him the same way. I found it endearing. It wasn’t until years after his death that I started to believe he was trying to make amends.
No one knew my grandfather was sick until he went into the hospital for the last time. He was in good shape as he neared his 87th birthday. A slim man with perfect posture, he was still gardening on my family’s farm land in Prince Edward County and mowing the lawn with an old push mower. We didn’t see it coming.
But in hindsight there were clues. For me, it was when months earlier he had handed me an envelope containing two pieces of paper — one typed and one handwritten — about my great-grandfather, who’d died long ago.
My grandfather asked me to read what was inside and see if I could make a story out of it. I was a journalism student in my early 20s about to head off to Ireland for a summer of travelling and waitressing and I tucked it in my suitcase. I read it in a cafe in Cork. I used to remember two things from it, now I only remember one: “He was a Grit, is a Grit, is a Grit,” and I recall thinking the Liberal leaning of a man long gone wouldn’t make a story anyone would run. And I forgot about it.
It would be too late once I realized that what he really wanted was for me to write an “in memoriam.” Like with the Emu, he’d wanted to pay tribute to his father and make amends — for reasons he never shared — in the time he had left.
Instead, I’d returned from Ireland, stopping by his house only to drop off a trinket. And I’d gone back to school, returning home during reading week, which I spent catching up with friends, telling my parents I’d go by my grandfather’s next time.
It pained me when I finally understood how much I’d let him down — all the times I was too busy, too selfish, too distracted or naive, thinking there’d always be more time.
Since his death, my extended family has drifted, as extended families tend to do. We haven’t done a shot of Emu in years. Sometimes I think we’re all still grieving, and wonder if the pain of remembering his loss keeps us apart.
I have searched for that envelope at my parents’ house, which used to be his, but I’ve never found it.
What I have found is the book of 1970s bodybuilders that he gave me as a teenager, telling me to make sure my boyfriends measured up. And that makes me think of how he explained the fact my siblings and I each have a body temperature one degree below normal: a flying saucer hovered outside my dad’s window when he was a kid.
And of the story of how he forgot a bag of goldfish in the car in winter and when he chipped them out of the ice they all came back to life, except for one he accidentally chipped in half.
And I remember the day I left for Ireland, when he came over and shook my hand, slipping into it a $20 bill and a two-inch frame containing a picture of him and my grandmother.
And I try to appreciate all his little eccentricities and the time I had with him. And, like him, I try to make amends with the people in my life while I still can. I call my parents back when I miss their call. I do crafts with my niece and nephew. And I write that “in memoriam” for a newspaper. Well, sort of.
And I try not to let my grandfather’s memory be overshadowed by my own remorse. As Christmas dinner amongst family might be sweeter sharing his stories rather than shots of Emu.