The Reindeer Keeper

 When it got to be that time of the year, when winter was thinking of fading into spring, my cousins and I gave Mother Nature a hand in the process as it seemed pretty slow to us. Because we spent lots of time outside anytime of the year-lots of time in the fields and pastures, whether attempting to feed my older brother's black angus as pictured above or running through hayfields or running to our clubhouse or down to the creek, when the thought of spring was in the air, we pitched in to help that happen even faster than Mother Nature had planned on making it happen. Sometimes we'd start in the driveways. We'd go into my aunt's garage and bring out whatever we could find to chop through the ice and shovel the remaining snow away. Guess we thought we'd then be able to ride our bikes. Whatever we thought we'd be out there working hard with shovels and hoes. Part of the fun was etching little streams out in the melting snow, leading that water to a bigger pool of ...

Did you ever look at an old photo and wish you could remember being in that moment; wish you could recall the conversation and remember who was around and figure out how that moment came about? When I look at the attached photo, I wonder. And I wish I could remember that day, sitting outside of my grandparents' farmhouse in the summertime behind my grandmother's tulip patch. I'm seated to the left in the wicker chair. My older brother is seated across from me and our cousin who is four months older than me is sitting between us. We appear to be having a snack or lunch. I appear to have my snack in my lap. That was probably a good idea because whatever I was eating most likely would have fallen to the ground and most likely a dog named Pepper who was most likely nearby would have enjoyed whatever I was supposed to be eating. We are probably drinking milk. As I grew older I remember enjoying the homemade lemonade my grandmother would make, using her lemon squeezer and ...