The Reindeer Keeper

To this day, there’s absolutely no explanation for my infatuation with classic Ford Mustangs. I know nothing about cars. I never did. But I can tell you when I first took notice of the Mustang, I fell head-over-heels in love-for a car. My parents were always trading cars. Because of their friendship with an Oldsmobile dealer, brands like Cutlass, Toronado, and the Ninety-Eight took turns sitting in our driveway. My father also had a thing for Lincoln Continentals. He was a funeral director so those cars were always black-always spotless and always off limits to those of us just itching to drive something-anything. Once in awhile during the summer he’d come home for lunch in a funeral van sort-of-thing. It too was black. He’d let us take it out beyond the hayfield while he ate. My cousins and I had lots of fun going over the wooden planks that spanned the creek. Then stepping on the pedal, we’d fly up the gravel road and across the open space to the woods. We never told my father ho

Most of us will live in more than one house as we grow up and move along through our lives. Each will hold its own memories. To me, of all the places I've called home, the house on the lane holds the most endearing memories. It was just a regular neighborhood home-with an upstairs, a closed-in porch where I'd play cards with my imaginary friends and win every time, a flagstone walkway my father and grandfather cemented in place, a cellar where you'd have to enter from the outside, a huge yard with lilac bushes and a rock garden, a kitchen with a counter where my goldfish sat, a front stairway that seemed so steep, a double living room, registers in the floor, and that chimney stack in the parlor that I thought was the most amazing contraption ever. Of course I was little. And when you're little everything seems amazing. The summer before I entered the fourth grade we moved to the country. Still to this day, a part of me remains in that house on the lane. Maybe that&

My mother was a Registered Nurse. Eventually she became the Charge Nurse in the ER on the Night shift. That shift worked well for my parents. My father would be home with my brother and me while my mother worked. Back then nurses wore immaculate, white uniforms-white nylons with a seam up the back and immaculate, white duty shoes. Their caps were white-starched white. My mother's cap had a black ribbon-like material across the front signifying sh e was a registered nurse. Even though I was very young, I sensed the pride she took in her uniform. I remember her nylons hanging on a hanger over the tub after soaking in the sink and her cap just starched spread out flat across the counter. Most of all I remember her polishing her duty shoes with a white liquid shoe polish in a bottle. She'd sit at the kitchen table in her slip with her hair up in bobby pins-shake the stuff-and then proceed to polish the shoes with a foam brush attached to the inside of the cap. She was very car