Prescient Christmas Presents

Something about the sparkle of Christmas decorations sparks nostalgia. One of the earliest gifts in my memory was a baby doll made of rubber or a similar composition. We lived the following summer on a Michigan lake, and for some reason my sister Carolyn and I buried the doll in the sand. I suppose we gave it a mock funeral or some such flight of our imaginations. When it occurred to me a day or two later to retrieve the doll, she had gone all sticky and gooey. Calamity.

My sister Jackie was in seventh grade and I, in third, the year her class made hand stitched booklets. She gave me hers as a Christmas gift for my poems. I remember the feel of the parchment-like paper and the twine that bound the pages. I recall the care with which I copied in a Thanksgiving poem that included "a huge five (sic) pound turkey." My teacher must have had a good laugh.

It was probably the following year that the mail brought Jackie, Carolyn and me each a box of jewel tone stationery, deep red, dark blue and green with white borders, and little pens with bottles of white ink. I thought they were the coolest thing ever.

My family knew I was meant to be a writer.

More nostalgia. Over the last weekend son Mark was in his attic and found a bin of keepsakes. In it he found a copy of "Just a Moment," the little literary magazine that published my first short story in its winter edition of 1991-1992.

My family was right. Ah, memories.