The Reindeer Keeper

When growing up and playing in the dining room of my grandparents’ farmhouse with my cousins, I remember being told to be careful of the china cupboard because it held all of my grandmother’s china, including tea cups with matching saucers and serving dishes, as well as plates and silverware kept in a particular box lined with velvet. We were told most everything in that china cupboard was kept for good. When I was a little girl I loved sitting in the middle of my parents’ bed and looking through my mother’s jewelry box covered with-yes again, velvet-midnight blue velvet. Everything in that jewelry box seemed to glisten. Gently touching the strands of jewels and stones and rings that glittered, I felt like a princess getting ready for the ball. But there were a few things I’d been told not to touch, like the long, narrow box holding my mother’s pearls and another holding a cameo brooch with matching earrings my father bought for my mother. I’d been told those pieces were kept for...

My youngest child never knew my grandmother. She passed away when he was a baby. But that doesn't mean she didn't leave him a memory-something just for him from a great-grandmother who wanted him to feel he was as special to her as the other great grandchildren who knew her-who sat on her lap and rocked with her in her rocking chair by the front window.  My grandmother was always using her hands like instruments to cook-to clean-to hold little ones and tell them she loved them-and to create. Sewing-darning-crocheting-braiding rugs-quilting. It never mattered what she was creating as long as her hands were busy with a task.   My grandmother set out to make my unborn a quilt. She had some of the little squares cut out. Back then we never knew if we were having a boy or a girl so she chose colors at random. It didn't matter what the colors were to me. What did matter was despite the fact she was tired and weak she kept pushing to finish the ...