The Reindeer Keeper

That's me with my hands on my cheeks sitting next to my cousin in a pretty dress. I don't know what we are doing, sitting there in the grass in the side yard off my grandparents' farmhouse. Right behind us would have been the door opening into the kitchen. To the left of us would have been the pump house. If I had to guess we might have been taking a break from playing although I don't look very happy. I was probably bored just sitting there. Maybe I wanted to get back to playing in our clubhouse. Looking at the picture I can imagine my mother saying one of her most often used phrases, "quit your lollygagging!" She'd say that all the time when, in her eyes, someone was going too slow or wasting time or spinning their wheels in indecision.It took me a few years to figure out what she meant. When I understood, her words made sense. The earliest recollection I have of her speaking those words to me was when we lived in the house by the lane. That was th...

Just outside the back door of my grandparents' farmhouse sat the pump house. It was painted white-quite small with  two windows and surrounded by flowers. There was a cement floor and the pump. That's all. Its purpose was to shelter the pump that provided a water source for the barn. In the sweltering heat of summer it also provided us the best-the coldest-the most refreshing water I've ever tasted-and it wasn't even packaged in a plastic bottle. All you had to do was grab hold of the handle and start pumping. Within seconds water would flow into whatever was catching it-little hands-buckets-cups-ladles. On some of those summer days we let the water flow all over the cement floor and then we'd splash around in our bare feet. It was our swimming pool even though all we'd do was slam our feet or put our heads under the water spout which took our breath away it was so very cold. It also provided a great place to hide when playing hide 'n seek. No one would ever...