“May you never be too grown up to search the skies on Christmas Eve.” —Unknown
(Warning: Santa Claus spoiler alert)
Many of my early childhood memories are now cloudy and faint, as if lingering in some kind of ethereal, dream-like world, partially hidden in a shroud of mist and mystery.
But there are a handful of events that I can still see so clearly, so vividly, that it’s almost as if I could reach out and touch them.
Christmas Eve, just days after I’d turned 6 years old, is one of those memories.
Believing in Magic
It was a cold, crisp night, the kind of night where your breath creates puffs of mist that warm your nose when you talk. Like most of my childhood Christmases in West Virginia, the ground lay covered in freshly fallen snow, glistening under the cloudless, star-laden sky….