When I was a kid, I couldn't understand why the adults in my life seemed so uninspired by Christmas. I was happy - the prospect of a few days off from school, of cookies and candy, of lights and ornaments, of family and feasting, and of course, of giving and getting presents. I believed in Santa until I was eight, maybe nine, before I finally relented that maybe Santa was more than a jolly old elf, that maybe he was the spirit of Christmas in all of us. I'd like to think that as my kids grew up, I was as big a kid about Christmas as they were. I love to get out the tree and the lights and the old battered ornaments. I love sending out Christmas cards to everyone from my family. But things have changed. There's a sadness to it I didn't want to face last year. My Grandmother Bowden has been gone for several years now, but she had been lost to Alzheimer's years before, so I didn't mourn her passing as much as maybe I should have. This year my Nana died, and my friend Sarah. And while I didn't plan on dwelling on that, when I pulled out the Christmas card box, there it was - written in black and white on the address list I keep packed away. Two names to mentally cross off my list, because I don't have the heart to put the pen to the page and do it. That's too permanent, too real. I wrote out the rest of the cards, and I guess in a little while I'll find courage to retype the list. But not right now. Not right now.
Like a bad penny.... We used to scuba dive as our hobby, a hobby which eventually led to the procurement/construction of a small dive trailer to haul four sets of gear and four cylinders. It was a simple but elegant design - a box on a single axle frame, with the beginnings of a mural painted on both sides, and dive flags at either end. The kids had helped paint it, with Stephen taking special pains with the sharks. When we moved to Nashville, we sold it. We didn't dive as often, and we had no place to store it. Nearly ten years have passed since that October in '99 when we came up here, and I hadn't thought much about the trailer. I thought I had seen it the last time we went to Greenfield, but I wasn't sure. Then Saturday my mother-in-law called to say the neighbor across the street had our trailer for sale. The neighbor was asking a certain price, and we offered a little less. She called back later to say it was ours for the picking up. Sunday we made the trip to fet...
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