Christmas Keepsakes

One child spends Christmas Eve busily creating on the cold tile floor for hours and hours.






Hidden from view by a bright tablecloth, she prepares her gift discreetly behind a kitchen table where no one, not even her mother, notices the sureness and discipline of the task before her.


















The only trace that remains on Christmas are colored fingers which emphasize the difficult work of her hands from the night before.

On Christmas morning stockings surprise us with decorated notes, and they are not from Santa. Each one has its own unique design and special scissor cut, its very own color.


Only a mother can appreciate the time and painstaking effort of coloring every other space in these greetings. Love is undeniably expressed through the fine details of her labor and is by far a most treasured gift to me.

And for my mother, who spent two especially trying days with me before Christmas, a poem by Nicholas Gordon.

You have always been where I return,
The home that is my harbor from the sea,
The place where what I am can easy be,
With nothing I need alter or unlearn.
That you would give has always been a given.
Your love for me is something simply there,
As plain and necessary as the air,
And just as unpretentious and unbidden.

And though I cannot give you now your due,
Which is beyond what these poor words can say,
I give you all I can this special day,
Which is the treasure of my love for you.


In the early morning, an unfolding of anticipation sets the mood as everyone waits patiently to take their turn with a wrapped present.


I'd like to hope that in the waiting, they learn that self might be quieted briefly by sharing in the excitement of one another's joy,

that life is more full when we fine-tune our experiences.





CHRISTMAS 1997

same girls, 10 years earlier