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A Neighborly Christmas

My mom must have baked for a month before Christmas every year. She had tubs of cookies in the stand alone freezer, tucked into closets, and usually all over the countertops in the kitchen for most of December. My mouth waters just thinking of them--split seconds, almond toffee, candycane cookies, butterscotch oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, fudge, divinity, some strange concoction involving nuts and long stringy, crunchy things dipped in chocolate. That's just to name a few. The cookies were placed on plates--each plate featuring a wonderful assortment--covered with saran wrap, topped with a stick-on bow, and then delivered throughout the neighborhood. When we were younger, we went as a family and caroled at the homes where we delivered plates. As the cooperative singing children became less cooperative and tight-lipped teens, the caroling ended, but we were still tasked with delivering plates to dozens and dozens of homes. I don't think my mom e...
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Christmas Phone Books

My brother David marches to the beat of his own drum. I hope he'll forgive me for writing this, but he was always a little different. In the brutal propaganda camp that is the public school system, he never quite fit in. In part it was because of his gifts. He was a piano prodigy. He composed and played at a genius level. I remember him winning a state-wide competition at the age of 9. All of the other finalists were adults with already accomplished careers in music. This wasn't his only gift. He had a gift for languages, mastering them quickly and building a high tolerance for studying them. He was fluent in French long before he was called, at 19, to serve a church mission in Belgium. Today, he is fluent in French, Spanish, and German, but has studied and can get by in Russian, Japanese, and many other more exotic languages. At any time, you are likely to find him with a dog-earred book on Mayan or Mandarin grammar. He developed a deep interest in geography and met...
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How Kjrsten Saved Christmas

Many years, Mom and Dad organized a "sub-for-Santa" on behalf of a family they felt was in need. One memorable year, we sub-for-Santa-ed the Buchanan family. The mother taught 6th grade at Sharon Elementary school where we all attended (at least those old enough to be in elementary school--David, Trinyan, Kjrsten, Ntanya, and maybe Leif. Maybe not Leif--I can't quite remember our ages, but I think David was in 6th grade, which would put me in 5th, Kj in 4th, Ntanya in 2nd, and so Leif in preschool. Patrick would have been 18 months.). Anyway, their family had experienced some kind of difficulty that year. My parents never really explained. I surmised it had something to do with the absence of Mr. Buchanan, leaving Mrs Buchanan with 5 or 6 children. Her eldest was David's age. I remember one of her daughters had vision problems and was constantly teased at school because she wore very thick glasses with a patch over one eye. On Christmas Eve we loaded the car ...
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