The Reindeer Keeper

It was the Christmas when I was seven that I found a desk under the tree with my name on it. I’d smelled the shellac when hurrying down the front stairs. I didn’t know what it was until I was told my grandfather used something called shellac when making the desk out of pine. It had two shelves on the right side and a single drawer in the front. When I opened the drawer I found a pad of lined paper with a No. 2 sharpened, yellow pencil. From that moment on I considered desks to be magical. My best friend back then was an only child. I loved running through our side yard to go play with her. Once inside the pale yellow house with a back stairway that took us up to her bedroom, we spent time not only in her room but spare rooms full of stuff as well. Going from one room to another we’d have to walk by a desk sitting in a nook all by itself. It was my friend’s desk. It was a roll top desk and whenever I could, I’d sit in the chair and pull the top back and be taken away by the

I don’t remember when I started the Christmas tradition of making gingerbread boys to fill a few of my old tin cans but that doesn’t matter because today the tradition continued. I’m sure the gingerbread boys don’t look like much of a tradition sitting in those old tin cans; faceless and awkward, without icing hair or icing eyes or icing mouths or icing buttons down their fronts. Some are plump. Some have hands or feet that don’t match. One gingerbread boy left one of his arms in the cookie cutter and I had to perform emergency surgery. But to me they don’t need to be perfect. Nothing’s perfect. To me it’s the feeling I get when seeing them sitting in those old tin cans in celebration of Christmas; sitting there faceless yet oh so full of the spirit of the season without frills or fancy ribbons or designer names attached. They’re never eaten or dunked in coffee. They just sit there in their old tin cans as the snow falls and the north wind blows and Christmas comes and go

I remember the evening my parents walked into our house situated on a lane with their arms full of bags and boxes; some wrapped and decorated with curly ribbon. They’d been downtown Christmas shopping. They’d been gone a long time. While our father took the babysitter home, our mother told my brother and me to go upstairs and get our pajamas on; then come back down and stay in the living room while she put things away. I watched her put one box on the dining room table as I hurried up the front stairs. When our father returned, we were told to sit by the tree in the living room. I could hear them whispering in the dining room. Then in they walked with my mother carrying that box she’d placed on the dining room table. Sitting in a chair by the tree my mother handed the box to my father. I can see him standing there still wearing a tie. He was always wearing a tie. Sometimes he’d be wearing a tie as he strung the tree with strands of blue lights. My father loved those blue lights.