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...

My grandparents worked more than a full day every day no matter the season. There were no vacations; no sick time. From all my grandmother's daily responsibilities in the farmhouse-plus caring for six daughters and preparing the earth for the spring gardens-to my grandfather working the fields and tending to his duties in the barn-that farm defined them and left those of us who loved them a lasting impression of what the word "work" both looks like and means. When my grandfather came in through the back door of the kitchen in the evening after finishing his nightly chores in the barn, he'd take time to relax before going to bed. Besides being an avid reader he was quite skillful as a woodworker. It was that skill that created my most favorite Christmas present ever-a pine desk with a single drawer and matching stool which he made for me when I was seven. Leading up to Christmas that year my cousins and I weren't allowed in the kitchen of the old farmhouse d...