Part of every Christmas, I think, is thinking back to —
“Remember the year that Aunt Olive forgot to take the lining paper out of the frozen pie crusts, and she made a bunch of custard pies with paper in the bottoms!” “Remember the year that we bought each other the same things for Christmas!” “Remember the year it SNOWED!!”
One of my most favorite Christmas Eve memories involves a boat, a starry night, and battleships. 1972.
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A couple of years ago, I got this package.
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A friend and I meet at Barnes and Noble most weeks, one evening, and read each others’ writings. Oh, we do talk about the families, her nephew, my grandson, what’s been going on, that sort of thing. But, our reason for meeting is the writing part of our lives.
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A couple of Wednesdays ago, I went back to West Avenue Elementary School to start Reading Club again. 
I have two of the girls from last year, but the third girl is going to a different school (say the other two girls). The school people said that I could choose the book for us to read this year, and showed me, in their library, all the books that they have “classroom sets” of. (In other words, multiple copies of the same book, so that students in an entire class can have their own copy to read.) I selected several books for the girls to choose from.
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There is an old joke whose punch line is “Kidney, man! Kidneys!” (And maybe I could have asked a dozen or so people and found out what the joke itself was, but just by typing in “kidneys, man, …,” Google instantly popped in the rest of the phrase and one click took me right to the joke.)
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A few years ago, Kevin and April bought an iRobot Roomba, a “vacuum cleaning robot.” After a while, they found 
themselves using it less and less and less. The configuration of their home made it difficult to use, so they offered it to me. Oh, yes, I wanted to try out the Roomba. And I love the Roomba. Most of the time. And I didn’t get rid of the regular vacuum cleaner; Roombas just do floors.
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All my growing up years, there was a cedar chest at the end of Mother and Daddy’s bed. I would show you a photo from those years, but astonishingly, there isn’t one. I’ve looked at all the pictures in my album, in my parents’ album, and I’ve asked JoAnne. It’s hard to imagine that a piece of furniture that was in our lives for about sixty-nine years doesn’t show up anywhere, but I can’t find it. Not a corner, not the top, a side, nothing.
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I’ve been keeping a friend’s baby this week. William. He’s three months old and pretty cute. Monday, he got a little irritated. Well, a lot irritated. I rocked, I bounced, I walked,
Baby William, sleeping soundly OUTSIDE!
I sang. Nothing worked. It was cloudy outside and pretty cool (at least for early September), so I thought maybe a stroller ride would soothe him. Buckling him into the seat was challenging. (Why do the safety straps on all those things hook together differently?!? Shouldn’t there be one best way and they all work that way?!?) But, finally, me, the stroller, and the screaming baby were ready. I opened up the patio door and pushed the stroller outside. The INSTANT the stroller rolled over the threshold into the outdoors, William stopped crying. Another few feet and he closed his eyes. A couple of trips up and down the driveway and he was asleep.
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Here’s one of my favorite quotes:
“Wild horses couldn’t drag a secret out of a woman. However, women seldom have lunch with wild horses.” Ivern Boyett*
A few years ago, David was employed as a researcher for a museum design company, and he worked at home. Sometimes, he would have lunch with a friend. He would leave at 11:30 or so and go meet the friend. Then, he’d be back home at 12:30. So, about ten minutes of travel each way; 20 minutes total travel time. Then parking, walking to the restaurant, getting seated, ordering. (Probably 10 more minutes; a total of 30 minutes so far.) And then, only 30 minutes for lunch. Seriously? Seriously! I would always be amazed when he got back home. That is so not the way I do lunch with friends.
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As many adult children do, my own sons have personal belongings stored at my house. I found it impossible to refuse, because my own mother stored stuff for me, way into my adulthood. Actually, there’s a barrel in my garage right now, of scrapbooks I made, growing up, along with a similar barrel filled with JoAnne’s scrapbooks.
Many years ago, Daddy created extra storage above the garage doors. That’s where the boys’ boxes are. It’s mostly Star Wars stuff. Jeremy also had a number of projects from the many art classes he had to take on the way to a Graphic Design degree. After we’d been in this house for a year or so, Jeremy came. He pulled down all the boxes that were labelled “Jeremy” and went through them. He organized things, like his school yearbooks, and enjoyed spending some time with his old friends Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, et al. As he was replacing items and organizing and evaluating, he suddenly looked around and said, “Where are my LEGOs? Are my LEGOs here? In the house?”
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