The Reindeer Keeper

When I learned of the death of actress Olivia de Havilland, my thoughts went back to a summer of long ago. My cousin and I were still hanging out in our chicken coop clubhouse, surrounded by the books, chalkboards and desks from an abandoned one-room schoolhouse up the road. Besides 'teaching' our younger siblings, we taught pretend students as well. And if we weren't teaching, we were putting on art shows, circuses, carnivals-whatever we thought the adults would 'love' to attend. After all, our shows were Free, and Tremendous. Sometimes we'd bring books to read if we had the chance. Our grandmother had given us the Laura Ingalls Wilder books one Christmas. We read them all. Other favorites were the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew Mysteries. But during that particular summer, I went to my mother's bookcase and pulled out a paperback she'd raved about titled, "Gone With The Wind." My mother was an avid reader. She worked evenings at the local...

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...

(I'm still unable to post a picture/photo on my Blog so I will continue to post the particular picture/photo that would have gone with a particular post on my Facebook page). There was one particular room in my grandparents' farmhouse that blossomed in the winter-warming the season's shadows with color and a sense of season's to come. The room was one of the two front parlors with a window facing the sun-the window where geraniums blossomed one right after another-spreading shades of red against the white on the other side of the cold and frozen panes streaked in frost. There was something magical when looking out the window where the flowers spread their leaves of green. Next to the window was a bookcase full of books. It was the same room where my grandfather would sit in his chair and read Saturday Evening Posts and Zane Gray westerns. I too have such a window in the winter where geraniums blossom all winter long-as the sun spreads those shades of red against ...

In my bookcase there sits a worn and tattered copy of this 1957 Ideals Publishing Company's Christmas story, "Jolly Old Santa Claus." Some of the pages are ripped; some held together by tape; some have crayon scribbles on them. My children loved this book when they were growing up. It wasn't because of the story. I can't remember us reading the story. It was the amazing illustrations by George Hinke that kept us going from page to page-night after night before Santa came to fill stockings, eat cookies and drink a glass of milk, pick up penciled letters filled with Christmas wishes, and leave a few special gifts under the tree. Sitting on the sofa in their pajamas as snow fell and popcorn popped, each page turned became a journey into that Wonder called Believing. Details were executed magnificently-with Mrs. Claus patting the dough before rolling it out on the old wooden table-and elves carrying trays of cookies to and from the small, brick ovens. Santa's ...