Christmas past
The other day I was thinking about my girls and how excited they are for Christmas. A flood of emotion swept over me as I considered the joyful holidays (and the hard ones) that Alisa and I shared together. Sometimes I watch my girls together and I am transported to my childhood and to my relationship with my little sister. We were little girls and it was the era of the Cabbage Patch dolls. Every little girl wanted one--and no one more than Alisa and I. But stores were sold out and so all the hoping guaranteed nothing. We had no hope of Santa bringing them because Dad had been quite frank with us about how the Santa thing worked. One day, a few weeks before Christmas, we made a hopeful discovery. In the closet, under the stairs, we found two Cabbage Patch-shaped boxes wrapped in one layer of white tissue paper. We could make out the words on the box. We were ecstatic. I don't know if we managed to hide the joy we had, knowing ther...