bearer of belated gifts

Today was a day off from work, and a belated Christmas for the fact that I worked on Christmas and the two days after. I’m still living on a shoestring, so the gifts I had for my daughter, my ex-wife, my mother and my younger brother came mostly from the Family Dollar. I felt bad about, so I did something I almost never do: I gave, not printed copies, but original journal pages, as gifts. The pages I chose for them, all from early 2009, had a particular connection to each of them.

This one was for Brian. He and I had marathon sessions playing Risk, a game of global conquest. Whenever I rolled the dice as the attacker, he’d exclaim, “LOSE one!”

This was for Joni. It was done when our beloved dog Bill was still alive and well, and the poem concerns the healing power of human-animal companionship.

This one was for Kate. One of Kate’s favorite songs is Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

Three fewer journal pages for me turns out to be a gain, not a loss. The pages are more valuable as connective tissue than as artifacts.