The Reindeer Keeper

Playing school was a favorite thing to do in our chicken coop clubhouse. But then, we were lucky. Our parents and grandparents filled that old place with desks, books, and chalkboards from an abandoned one-room schoolhouse. Our schoolhouse wasn't made by Fisher-Price. It stemmed from our imagination. There were no summers or week-ends off. Our school was open all year long despite the fact some of the windows were without glass allowing snow to pile up inside during the winter. But we didn't mind. School was in session. And if we didn't have little brothers and sisters and cousins to teach, we used that imagination to fill the two rows of desks-the same type of desks you'd see in 'Little House on the Prairie' episodes. I still have one of my favorite books I used when 'teaching.' It didn't come from that one-room schoolhouse. It belonged to my grandmother. She had a few editions of the "Barnes's New National Readers." The one I have...

Call it what you want-a porch or a veranda. The term doesn't matter as much as the value it holds in the early morning or at the end of a day. It doesn't matter if it's one person sitting there enjoying that first cup of coffee or several sitting around after a long day discussing whatever they choose to discuss. It doesn't matter if it's used for a celebration of a special moment or for the rocking of a little one to sleep as a gentle breeze passes by. Whatever the reason-there is no place like that place called whatever we chose to call it. What does matter are the values of friendship-of family-of conversation and companionship such a place nurtures and develops from one moment to the next. In this era of electronic devices taking over real human interaction where that conversation is turned from people to people face-to-face to cold, hard devices with fingers moving at lightning speed and heads down and where words spoken are nil-that place called whatever...