The Reindeer Keeper

With the snow and the wind and below zero temperatures, I sometimes fix something simple for myself when suppertime comes around. This doesn’t happen every night but when it does happen; whatever I fix not only warms me up but fills me with an even deeper appreciation of winter. I’d never think of having hot cereal for supper in the summertime. But I do during the winter. And I enjoy every spoonful as much as I would enjoy a full-course meal. After the hot dogs and potato salads and the boiled dinners and turkeys, winter offers a time of slowing down and occasionally treating yourself to simple, warm and relaxing suppers. Besides a bowl of hot cereal, which could be Oatmeal, Corn Meal, or Wheatena with an added treat of dipping a piece of toast into any one of those cereals, my simple winter supper might be buttermilk pancakes with either blueberries or bananas on top. When the kids were little I had a Hello Kitty-shaped pancake skillet. Those pancake suppers were quite popular...

We all have our ways of decorating the Christmas tree. My way begins with bringing down the box that holds many of the decorations. It’s an old box. It once held a VCR made by RCA. At the time, it was an exciting gift for the family. I should retire the box. I know there are better ways to store the decorations but I’ve yet to make the move. You see, that old box has become a part of the tradition of trimming the tree. After all, it has the responsibility of holding the decorations all year long. And most of those decorations are priceless-not in the money sense of the word. Rather, in the memory sense. They each tell a story of a time or a place in our family history. When I was first married, I bought a paint-by-number Christmas kit holding small wooden Christmas decorations complete with a small hole for the string to hang them on the tree and little plastic containers with the paint and two paint brushes. I started painting them late in the season. When Christmas came aroun...