The Reindeer Keeper

When my grandparents lived in their farmhouse, many times during the winter my grandfather worked on projects in the kitchen. In the evening he’d shut the door leading to the dining room and get busy. He’d do it all in that kitchen-from sawing to nailing to finishing. The end results became keepsakes to those lucky enough to be given one. I’ve written before about the pine desk my grandfather made me. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it on Christmas morning when I was 8 years old. Smelling of shellac, it came with a stool and a single drawer. Inside that drawer was a pad of paper with a sharpened #2 pencil. My mother was another recipient of one of my grandfather’s wooden heirlooms. Hers was a bookcase made of pine with three shelves. The bookcase was the perfect gift for my mother as she was an avid reader. Her favorite books were mostly novels set in the South during the Civil War; the era of Rhett and Scarlett and big hoop dresses and sprawling plantations. I re...

When Borders closed their bookstores my thoughts took me back to when I was a little girl, going downtown to a small bookstore with my mother. She was a nurse; on duty midnights. Back home in the mornings, she'd read before going to bed. She was an avid reader even when exhausted. There was something about those stacks of books piled on top of old tables and filling shelves in that bookstore of long ago. That place was part of the community. It was a place to gather located in a family department store on the main floor tucked off by itself. I remember small window panes protruding out a bit onto the sidewalk; making for great displays especially when it was Christmastime and I was shopping with my mother. I don't think I could even read back then but it didn't matter. Whatever book I picked up I'd pretend to be able to put sentences together-and read. Bookstores, real bookstores with front doors and people browzing and sitting and sipping coffee-all involved with...