The Reindeer Keeper

Growing up I never understood how my mother could get irked by my father. To me, he was near perfect. He had a sense of humor. He never yelled at us. He always gave us whatever we asked for. Over summer vacation, I'd stay up and watch the late movie with him. My father most always fell asleep. When we were old enough he'd let us drive his old funeral van around the backfields. Once I had my license he let me take whatever car was in the driveway. One week night when I was in my freshman year of high school, my mother had to go somewhere with one of her sisters. She left my father in charge. The only problem was he had a cold. I had a cold too but it didn't seem to matter. My father was the one sick. He was the one sneezing and blowing his nose. I was too but he retreated to his bed-covering himself up and telling me to turn the heat up because he was chilled. I told him I was too. My father didn't answer. Instead he asked for another blanket. ...

Like so many small communities, my hometown had a functioning train depot many years ago. I don't remember much about it nor do I recall the trains coming and going. I've seen photos and heard stories and understand its history-a history wrapped about our country's history of growing and expanding with people taking the rails to travel-with industries using the trains to ship their goods. I took the above photo of our train depot more than a few years ago. At that point in time, it'd been closed down. Travelling by train was becoming a thing of the past. Unfortunately my hometown lost this piece of history to a fire. Gone went its marble floors and the hustle and bustle. But one thing that hasn't disappeared is the howling of trains passing in the night. Living about an hour from Ottawa and two hours from Montreal on the U.S. Canadian border along the St. Lawrence River we are blessed by the howling of trains on the Canadian side drifting over the river, chuggi...

I wish this old photo showed more of what was going on-showed more of who was there-maybe even showed my grandparents' farmhouse with its screened-in front porch because I know that's where this photo was taken. Underneath all that snow is the cinder driveway that led around to the back of that house down to the shallow rock. Shown is one poplar tree. There were more poplar trees lining that driveway back then. I loved when the wind moved the leaves. It was magical. I didn't love the thunder and lightning storm that cracked one of those trees in half on a summer evening when I huddled around my grandmother with my cousins on that screened-in front porch. Standing in the forefront is my father. What's surprising to me is not the cigarette in his mouth because they all smoked back then. What's surprising is the fact he is out there in the first place appearing to be enjoying himself. And he's not wearing a tie. In fact, he seems to be wearing a leisure sort of...

Most of us will go through life having more than a few places we'll call home. Different stages in our lives-different circumstances warrant changes in our address. Some of those changes go unnoticed. A very few remain with us no matter where we go. It's not because of brand name counter tops or built-in fireplaces or in-ground pools with surrounding paper brick. While that stuff might make us comfortable, none of it matters for the simple reason home is not defined by a price tag or a brand or color or design. Rather, home is defined in our hearts. Home tugs at us. Like a bird in its nest, we know when we're there. Home wraps us up in comfort like an old, tattered quilt. Home keeps the world away. Home allows us to be still. I have a few places I call home. The one that comes to mind more often than not was my first home. The home where I grew up before we moved to the country when I was in the third grade. I remember every nook and cranny of...

Besides the pine desk my grandfather made me one year for Christmas being one of my most favorite Christmas presents ever, my white figure skates are on that list as well. Little did I know that particular Christmas morning, as I sat on my knees in the living room of a house situated alongside a lane, with my grandmother watching me open a box and finding the skates underneath sheets of tissue paper, that many years later I'd remember that moment when opening the box as if it was yesterday. I'd asked for the skates. I'd seen them sitting on a sled in a window of a hardware store in our downtown when out Christmas shopping with my mother. The skates were just as I imagined. I knew they were for me. Shortly after that Christmas we moved out to the country. Lucky for me and my skates there was a creek that flowed through the field behind our house and cousins next door who loved to skate. In the winter once the creek froze over, we were down there w...

Back in 1975 the oldest of my grandmother's six daughters undertook a project that still brings smiles to those of us who have followed. This aunt was quite creative. I remember her making Christmas candles using discarded milk cartons and serving the best sloppy joes ever. But it was that project years ago of sitting down with my grandmother and collecting her most treasured recipes and then putting them in order in a handwritten cookbook that takes the cak e-pardon the pun. You have to understand. Many of my grandmother's recipes weren't written down or found in another cookbook. They certainly weren't on line. The only on line back then was a clothesline.Her recipes were in her heart-her mind. Many didn't have exact measurements. A pinch of this-a thing or two of that were used to define teaspoons and tablespoons. How long to bake something was often not told in time but how something looked or smelled in the oven. "Until it looks cooked" was a favort...

  It’s fitting that January follows the hustle and stress of Christmas. Call me odd but January’s my favorite month of the year. It’s always been my favorite. When I was little, it was the mounds of snow that intrigued me. It didn’t matter how cold it was, my cousins and I would stay outside making snow houses and castles and forts. Now when January rolls around, the art of soup-making intrigues me. Drawing me to the kitchen which is not where I normally prefer to create. I didn’t come by this soup thing on my own. It’s in the genes. And it is an art. Add a loaf of bread and a salad and January gets even better. Along with donuts and breads, French goulash and everything else in between, my grandmother was the original soup guru. Anything leftover became soup for the next day. When you farm the land and you’re raising six daughters, there’s nothing called waste. Instead of following recipes, my grandmother followed her intuition with the season of the year determini...