Christmas Memory, One Christmas, and the Thanksgiving Visitor Book

It's the last week of November, but we've had so much snow here in Colorado, I feel like we've already crawled past both Thanksgiving and Christmas and have entered the doldrums of January.

I'm feeling like Doctor Zhivago's wife today, ready to wrap myself in a wool blanket and sip vodka while I stare out the window, disconsolately. I'd like to tell our guests who are invited for Thursday for the Thanksgiving meal. . . no soup for you.

Now a nude December fig branch grates against the window.

Buddy and Miss Sook get me today, understand my mood. They don't have the snow to contend with in their small town in Alabama, but they understand, all too well, a desolate landscape.

They've been abandoned by parents, misunderstood by peers, and they have nothing much on earth but each other. . . which is everything to them. They are a team and they must rally to make their own magic, and never do they do so better than when they summon'this very week'the making of the fruitcakes for the holiday season.

Caarackle! A cheery crunch, scraps of miniature thunder sound as the shells collapse and the golden mound of sweet oily ivory meat mounts in the milk-glass bowl.

Oh, my dark heart can rejoice!

I have avoided this little treasure, this collection of three short stories about Thanksgiving and Christmas. I suspected it would be schmaltzy, cheesy. Boring, too. Wow, was I wrong.

This book surprised me by summoning three of my all-time favorite American novels: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Age of Innocence and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

I want to eat this little pocket-sized book. Pop it into my mouth like a roasted, buttered pecan. Ponder its stark beauty forever.

The light from this story is small; it is one tealight candle in a dimly lit room, but the images still manage to jump out at me, flash briefly in my eyes, cast their dimensions on the otherwise blank wall.

How happy I am to be reminded today that joy can be kindled from one small, spark of cheer.