The Reindeer Keeper

I wish I had an actual photo of the rope swing with a knot at the end enjoyed by my cousins and I when playing down at the creek. This photo showing my aunt raking wood chips while wearing a skirt gives you a sense of where the creek was located-behind her looking over the top of the woodpile-but it doesn't show the towering maple tree from which a rope swing hung. It would have been more to the right-further along behind the woodpile. Being a kid, that tree was mighty. Taller than all the rest, it stood out along that creek bed. No matter the season, that tree ruled. In the spring when the water rose and chunks of ice crashed against it as the wind blew and the snow swirled, that tree stood its ground. Looking out my bedroom window, I'd watch the rope get tossed about. Sometimes it'd be frozen in place due to sub-zero temperatures. When there were ice storms it'd become one long, thick sheet of ice. None of that stopped us from going down there. We never considered

When I entered my grandmother in a contest sponsored by Ladies' Home Journal, I never told her. That's because I thought I'd surprise her if for some wild chance she'd be one of eight women chosen from essays submitted by readers to be showcased in a special supplement in their July issue titled "The Real Beauties of America." It was 1976. America would be celebrating its Bicentennial! The minute I read about the Journal's search for those eight women in early February I focused on my grandmother-nicknamed Giddy by my older brother when he was a little boy. The name stuck. Everyone called her Giddy. I wrote my submission out on a legal pad over a weekend. I'd thought about what I'd say days prior whenever I had a moment to think. At that time I was the mother of 3 young children. There was no internet back then so once I was just about finished with what I was writing I took out my typewriter and began fine tuning it. I mailed it at the post