“It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” ― Mother Teresa

It must have been about 1961. Christmas in Fairbanks. Alaska. You know you're jealous. My father, an Air Force man, made it a point to pull us off military housing and as far away as possible. In Alaska, we lived on two acres of cleared forest land and he named it "Cloud Nine." How lucky is a kid to grow up with such a clever parent. In the photo you see here, we'd sit in that same spot, photo taken or not, listening to our folks' Time Life records. "My Blue Heaven," "Bye-Bye Blackbird," classical music, Mahalia Jackson, and yes, staring at the photos of that big coffee table Bible my mother adored.

Living large.

That Christmas, Fairbanks got a whalloping big storm and no one could move. Ordered. No one. I'm sure my mother was frantic. She hadn't shopped, yet. Christmas Eve came and we were still snowbound. So we started taking toys and items we knew the other loved and we wrapped them in aluminum foil and put them under the Christmas tree - the one holding icicles perfectly aligned and layered by mother who placed them on one at a time in an excruciatingly tedious way - as I would come to discover while assisting her. "Stop!" she'd say more than once. "You're just throwing them on. I will do it." And she was right. I hated doing it so slowly and yet, oh how beautiful it looked when she did it. Quite a craftswoman, my mother.

So we laid our aluminum-wrapped gifts under the tree and in the morning, handed them to each other. There were no fights, no disappointments, no eyeballing who got what. Just all of us sitting there, smiling, and staring at our objects; the ones we already knew we loved.

                                                            Merry Christmas.