Monday, December 21, 2009

The Women in My Life

I flew up to Utah last Thursday and helped Devery and Easton move out of their apartment in Provo and down to their new apartment in Albuquerque (bringing Darren down, also, for the holidays). Easton has now graduated from BYU in Construction Management and will be working for Bradbury Stamm Corporation in Albuquerque. (He, Devery, and Mason will be living near the intersection of Eagle Ranch Rd. and Paradise Blvd. on the west side.) This photo was taken in our living room on Sunday night and shows most of the women in my life (and the two new grandsons -- Nicole and the twins were there but didn't make it into the picture). L-R: Dorine, Heidi, Kiley, Kayla, Mom, Tyler, Devery, Mason, Kristy, Alexis.)

Christmas - Pieces of My Childhood

When I was a child, the Christmas season always seemed full of wonder and possibilities. Essential to that sense of wonder was a set of Christmas tree ornaments that my mother had, consisting of translucent-plastic animals, which have always brought back vivid, cherished memories of my early years. When I told Mom recently that I hoped she'd someday give me one of the ornaments as a memento of my childhood, of course she insisted on giving me two. Surprisingly, she still had five of the original set of six animals -- lambs, kittens, and pigs -- and I selected one of the pigs and one of the kittens (see photo). Just looking at them summons forth hazy memories of a dozen or more Christmas trees (including one that I remember had a bird's nest in its branches, and another, a piñón, whose seed pods kept bursting open in the warmth of our home), and hours upon hours of staring at the lights and decorations and marveling at the colors. Nowadays, Christmas comes and goes with my hardly anticipating it or noticing its passing, but there was a time when it meant the world to me and more.

[Update 2/2/10: My mother had this photo of Devery, taken at my parents' house on Christmas Day, 1992. You can see one of the ornaments in question, a pig, just to the left of Devery's head (on her right).]