The thing with Christmas is you never know, a frosty butterfly might flutter past a magical tree that preserves the whipped cream memories of snow days past.  Or maybe its only a dream….sleep tight, my dears!

Home waits across the River, beyond the Battlefield of Snowballs, past the Covered Bridge and Skating Pond.  Home, where a Tree stands sentinel, dressed in solitary green, its lights brightening against the night’s darkest skies.  See the candles in the windows? Here, take Mamma’s hand, take Daddy’s hand, we are almost there.

circa 1979

How many hours did I lie on the long couch in Pat Read’s home on Christmas night, turning over in my mind the riddle of the bubbling lights on the Christmas tree, their little columns of glass and red liquid poking up here and there among the green boughs, singing with tiny circles of air which rose again and again from nowhere, an infinite procession as hypnotic as the reflections of taillights and headlights rolling rhythmically across the cold backseat windows as we rode in the dark of Christmas Eve, mile after mile, until the slippery red and white beads of light finally chased my thoughts away, and I slept wedged between the hard door handle and my sister’s shoulder, awakening at last to stumble drowsily from the snowy driveway into Aunt Patty’s bright kitchen, in Christmastime, Indiana, where all these faces waited just for me.