The Reindeer Keeper

While doing some cleaning-out-of-stuff in the garage recently I came across an old cardboard box marked fragile. Pulling the box closer to me, I sat down and removed the yellowed, crinkled tape holding it together; then slowly opened it. As I began lifting away layers of crumpled newspapers, I noticed something towards the bottom, half exposed and sparkling. Taking a closer look, I knew what I’d found.   Every once in a while, I’d wonder where it’d gone. After removing the rest of the newspapers, I stood with that box in hand and went inside the house. Putting it down on the kitchen counter, I began pulling out small crystal cups and eventually, a crystal punch bowl and crystal ladle. All of the pieces had belonged to my mother.   Taking a wet cloth, I wiped away leftover bits of newspapers and grit and remnants of leaves that had found their way inside the box. The longer I stood there, the more memories of that crystal punch bowl came back to me. My father was a memb...

When I was growing up I was lucky to have a mother and a grandmother who bought me books that I fell in love with and remain favorites to this day. Of course there was no internet to go to when buying the books. Instead there was a little bookstore in our downtown. Sometimes I'd get to go there with my mother. I'd be excited when walking through the door and seeing all the books on display. The smell of the books, of the type on the pages, was magical. My grandmother bought me books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I not only read those books. I devoured them. From the little house in the woods where Laura lived with her family to the house  on the prairie to the house on the banks of Plum Creek, I was with Laura and her family wherever they went. I shivered in fear when wolves would howl or grasshoppers brought about a plague or fierce blizzards buried them in snow. I imagined playing with dolls made of cornstalks in the attic with Laura and Mary. I loved summer planti...

This old photo shows me standing between my parents. My mother is holding my little sister. We are packing up the first place I ever called home and moving to the country. I remember feeling sad. I didn't want to move anywhere. I loved that clapboard house sitting on a lane just minutes from where I went to school. I loved my bedroom with back stairs leading down to the kitchen. I loved having my desk in my bedroom sitting beside a window where I could look out as I "wrote my stories." (Check the notebook in my hands). I loved the sun porch and the high counter in the kitchen where my tadpole swam in a bowl of water. I loved the big yard and my best friend who lived but a minute away. I loved the double living room. I loved coming down the front stairs on Christmas morning. The photo was taken in the second living room. The doorway behind my mother led to the kitchen and then the sunporch. To her left was the dining room where on Christmas Eve she'd set the table ...