Flash Fiction– “Haunted House”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Since February is the shortest month -even during a leap year- it seems fitting to take advantage of that and post some flash fiction.

This is a 500 word story that I initially wrote during a NaNoWriMo while doing several pieces to make my 50,000 word count. The first draft was twice as long and not working. A 500 word story contest inspired me to cut it in half and I was much happier with it.

I lost the contest, but I gained a story.

Haunted House

She’s hiding behind a desk in a room. Not under it. She doesn’t want to get trapped. Under it, she would be trapped. Behind it, she can jump and run. And she can keep an eye on the door, peering over the ruined wood as she kneels on cracked and crackling tile.

He’s hunkered down in the room across the hall. She can’t see him even though the door is ajar. There’s only a little bit of light in the hallway. Everything is in black and white. The only color is the writing on the wall, the drippy numbers that mean nothing to her. The big blue three looms over her.

She doesn’t know him. She snuck in on a dare. He was already inside. But now they’re both in this together, a sacred pact of bad decisions.

It’s quiet. All she hears is her own breathing.

And footsteps. Echoing. Closer.

She wants to cry. Instead, she ducks down and holds her breath, afraid he’ll hear her breathe.

Can he hear her heart pound?

She nearly bolts when she hears a door squeak open. Nearly. It’s not her door. It’s his. The door to the room across the hall where her friend in poor life choices is hiding.

She risks a peek and sees the monster they’re hiding from disappear inside, tall and grimy, with filthy hair stringing down his back, his soiled wifebeater somehow stark in the scant light.

He’s in there now. He’s in there with him.

She risks a breath, afraid it’ll turn into a scream. She hopes to whatever God might be around that the monster doesn’t find him.

She should run before the monster finds her.

Vague sounds of movement. A muffled scramble.

The reverberation of a crack!thud gags her. The body of the friend she never knew falls through the door, his balding head now a bloody mash on one side. The unblemished side smacks the tile, causing another ripple of nausea. He lies there, his head and shoulders in the hallway, the rest of him swallowed into the darkness of the room he’d been hiding in.

She stares in horror because what else can she do? The worst has already happened, right?

Another muffled noise from across the hall and then the fresh corpse is jerked into the darkness of the room.

Adrenaline floods her body.

Now she’s running.

She’s out from behind the desk and into the hallway before she allows herself to process that she’s moving, her footfalls giving her away as she pounds down the busted tile in search of freedom in the dim maze.

The echoes become a stampede.

He’s right behind her, he’s gaining, and she can’t remember how to get out.

She can’t get out.

Her last thought in life isn’t a fear-driven plea for escape. It isn’t even panicked.

It’s the calm answer to the question that caused her to sneak inside in the first place.

“So, that’s why the haunted house corpses look so real.”

Read This If–Love Is in the Air

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

There are a lot of tropes in genre fiction and naturally, the romance genre has a ton.

One that I’ve discovered that I enjoy is the forbidden romance. Not the “I can’t be with you because I have hang-ups” kind of forbidden, but the “We absolutely cannot be together because outside reasons” forbidden.

These two books are on the opposite ends of the spice scale and their outside obstacles are wildly different, but their forbiddenness satisfies my thirst for the trope.

Love at 350° by Lisa Peers- On the very mild end of the spice scale, we have love during a TV baking contest. Tori Moore is a high school chemistry teacher with dreams of opening her own bakery. With an empty nest looming, her twins get her an audition on American Bake-o-Rama, where she meets Kendra Campbell, the notoriously tough judge, who’s going through her own life upheaval. It takes no time for the two of them to develop heart eyes for each other, but there’s a clause in the contract about fraternizing that would cost them both dearly.

This is a very sweet story and due to the nature of the contract, the romance is a very hands-off slow burn. I realize that doesn’t sound like it would be too entertaining, but it is. In part because there’s a lot of story going on around the romance. Tori’s facing a huge life change as a divorced woman with her twins leaving for college and the prospect of leaving a job she loves for the dream she craves and winning the contest would be her springboard. Meanwhile, Kendra is facing the closure of her beloved restaurant while dealing with her business manager brother’s matchmaking.

And then there’s the competition itself, which is very much like The Great British Bake-off with the likeable contestants you’re sad to see leave. But this show has a little more drama including secrets and sabotage.

The book also includes a recipe for paper bag apple pie. Who doesn’t love pie? (Don’t answer that.)

Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner- And on the absolute other end of the spice spectrum, we have a May-December romance with one big complication. Cassie Klein uses Family Weekend at college to go off-campus and ends up landing a very hot one-night stand with an older woman…who turns out to be the mom of one of her best friends at school. Oops! Erin Bennett wasn’t meaning to hook-up with a college student when she went to visit her daughter at school and she definitely didn’t mean for it to be her daughter’s friend.

Things get complicated when Parker brings Cassie home for the holidays. Cassie and Erin find that any hope of keeping their hands off each other impossible and start hooking up on the sly. The complications get even more complicated when the super hot sex sprouts genuine feelings.

What I like is that Erin and Cassie have lives and relationships outside of this burning, horny passion. Cassie has school and friend drama beyond keeping it from Parker that she’s hooking up with her mom. Meanwhile, Erin’s faced with keeping this secret from Parker while also battling her ex for her daughter’s attention.

It’s a whole lot of messy and a whole lot of good. And the sex is really, really hot.

If you give these forbidden romances a try, I hope find them irresistible. And if you don’t, keep it a secret.

I Cannot Be in a Het Relationship

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

If you read the blog post title, you might be thinking, “Whoa, that’s pretty extreme.”

If you didn’t read the blog post title, I’ll repeat myself. I cannot be in a het relationship.

Now that you’ve had time to think, “Whoa, that’s pretty extreme,” allow me to explain. Just in case you’re that thoroughly invested in my non-existent love life.

As it has been well-established, I am bisexual. Or bi+. Or queer. Therefore, it is impossible for me to be in a het relationship.

This tends to confuse people. As a bisexual person, I am (unfortunately) attracted to men and have been in relationships with an unlucky few. From the outside, it looks like I’m in a het relationship. There’s a cis woman and a cis man (or a trans man) doing relationship things. Why would anyone suspect anything different? Hell, even the poor fella in the relationship would assume that it was a het relationship if he’s, ya know, cishet.

Hate to break it to you, my dude, but you’re in a queer relationship here. Relax! It doesn’t make you any less het. It also doesn’t make me any less bi.

I think this is one of the most baffling aspects of bisexuality (and probably pansexuality, but I don’t identify that way, so I won’t speak for them). Most people don’t seem to understand that our sexuality isn’t defined by our relationship status. We don’t suddenly stop being bi because we enter into a “het” relationship. Our Rainbow Mafia membership cards don’t get revoked because of other people’s straight perceptions. We do not choose sides. We’re on the same side we’ve always been on. The Bi Side.

Don’t think I’m picking on the fellas here. By the same logic, I cannot be in a lesbian relationship either. Sure, it’s still a queer relationship because we’re both queer, but it’s not a lesbian relationship because I’m not a lesbian. It’s not a lesbian relationship if the other woman is also bisexual. Or pansexual. Or trans. Yes, even if the trans woman identifies as a lesbian. See the above statement in which I cannot be in a lesbian relationship because I do not identify as a lesbian.

You may be wondering what the big deal is. Who cares if people think your relationship is het? Or lesbian? Well, I do. I care because it’s my relationship and it deserves to be respected in its definition. I realize that strangers glancing in the direction of me and my hypothetical partner can’t determine such details from a distance, but the people closer to us are more in the loop. They should know. They DO know. But when it comes to being in a relationship with a man, it’s easy for them to dismiss my queerness because of the straight optics. I don’t like being dismissed.

I also care because I don’t need or want a cishet male partner using his cishetness to dismiss my queerness. Your straight dick didn’t straighten me.

My bisexuality is an important part of my identity and it doesn’t go away if I happen to fall for a dude just because it makes you see straight.

This Is Where I Keep My Crazy

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I realized the other night that I’ve been keeping a journal for over twenty years.

I’ve probably talked about my journaling before, but I’m prone to repeat myself more often now that my brain is 95% song lyrics and movie quotes. So, I’m just going to talk about it again.

I remember attempting diaries as a kid, but never stuck with it. Probably because I was nine and didn’t have much of a life to write about and even though I was a writer, I thought diaries were strictly for real life escapades. As far as I was concerned, I was not doing any escapades worth writing about back then.

About six months after my oldest niece was born, I was gifted a journal. She’s twenty-two now. Anyway, it took me a couple of weeks to work up the courage to write my first entry. Once that seal was broken, though, I found it easier to write down my thoughts. But it would be years before I made it a daily habit.

Despite what my nine year old self thought, I’m still not using my journals strictly for my real life escapades, though the few escapades I do manage to have typically rate a mention.

My journals are where I keep my crazy.

My mind is a hellscape. It frequently gets too full. That one time I saw a therapist for three appointments before she got sick and I never rescheduled, she said that part of my problem is that I hold things in to the point that they overflow, and that retention was contributing heavily to the toxic state of my mind. So, I started putting the things that I couldn’t or didn’t want to talk about out loud into the pages of my journals. It helped. It got it out of my head and onto the page where I could see it and examine it from a safe distance. Poking about the words spewed from my brain has helped me a lot when it comes to figuring out how my defective grey matter works.

My roommate, who once had her privacy invaded thanks to a journal-reading incident, asked me how I can just leave my journal on my bedside table without worrying about someone reading it.

Simple.

If you read my journal, you get what you deserve.

People underestimate the shit that goes on in my head. I’m not just writing about annoying coworkers and petty grievances and people I find dreamy (though I do mention that sometimes). I’m not just jotting down my goals and to do lists and my dreams (though I do that, too).

This is where I keep my crazy. My rage. My self-harm thoughts. My go-to-jail thoughts. My delusions and illusions. My paranoia. My anxiety. My depression. My whacked out, what the fuck thoughts that would make even the strongest whimper and cringe. This shit is not for the faint of heart. It’s not even for the sure of heart.

If someone decides to go sneaking a peek at those pages, they’re going to end up scarred for life. They’re certainly never going to look at me the same way ever again. And it would be all their own fault.

I have every intention of destroying my journals before I die. Or leaving instructions with someone I trust to have them destroy them for me. There’s no goldmine in those pages, nothing publishable, nothing salvageable, nothing memorable. Nothing that needs to be remembered.

They’re just bits of my mind, anyway.

They should go with me to the grave.

What’s My Stretchmarks Rebrand?

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

Remember when everyone started calling the stretchmarks gained in pregnancy “tiger stripes”? It was done in an effort to make child bearing folks feel better about the changes their body underwent while they were growing and birthing an entire human being. As a collective, we decided to change a flaw to a badge of honor. As well we should. Growing and birthing a person is kind of a big deal.

So, I have to ask…where’s my stretchmarks rebrand?

My first stretchmarks came from puberty, as did a lot of other people’s. Many of these faded marks on my hips I got as I entered my teens. These deep grooves on my breasts came from a late bloomer blossoming so fast that I went up multiple cup sizes in a year. What are these stretchmarks? Boob grooves? Growth charts? Puberty scars? Puberty is a pretty brutal time of life, anyway. Might as well show the stretchmarks as the warrior wounds they are.

And what about the stretchmarks I acquired through weight gain? Why should they be vilified? There are many tasty treats and lazy days behind some of those marks (a lot of depression, injury, and illness, too, but never mind the negative; we’re being positive here). What do we call those? Burrito bands? Cookie cracks? Buffet lines?

I ask these inane questions because stretchmarks are a mark of life. Most people have them. They are proof of growth during life. Why do they need a rebrand? Specifically, why are only one specific type of stretchmarks worthy of a rebrand?

As a society, we’re kind of hung up on exemptions. It’s okay to have stretchmarks as long as you’ve acquired them because of pregnancy. It’s okay to be fat as long as you’re fat a certain way (“curvy” with a tiny waist, flat stomach, and fat ass, also try not to be over a size 14) or you’re a “good” fatty because you’re actually healthy or you’re trying not to be fat. It’s okay to be old as long as you look younger than your age. It’s wild to think of how many of these sorts of societal standards have asterisks on them. Terms and conditions may apply.

In the long run, stretchmarks as a flaw is a bullshit concept. Pristine skin with no evidence of existence is yet another unattainable standard. As I said, many of us get marked in our early teens. Ruined before we begin, no chance at perfection. Of course, there’s no money to be made if we accept ourselves how we are, now is there? I’m not going to purchase a cream to fade my stretchmarks if they don’t bother me. There’s no means to keep us in our places either, so to speak. You can’t shame me for a flaw if I don’t have it, right? Can’t keep me small and insecure, can’t lower my value over a perceived defect if I don’t perceive it.

I’m going to take matters into my own hands. Rebrand my stretchmarks. Not because I think I need to or because I have to, but because I want to. I think it’ll be fun.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go learn to love my boob grooves and buffet lines.

Read This If–The Dead Intrigue You

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

For clarity’s sake, I’m talking about corpses, not The Grateful Dead. Not to say that The Grateful Dead aren’t intriguing. I enjoy their music. But I’ve never read a book about them.

I have, though, read numerous books about the dead. We’re talking books about decomp, morgues, cemeteries, crime scene clean-up, cremation, funeral homes, embalming, all of that fun stuff. Why? I don’t know. I think part of it stems from the fact that I fear things less when I know how they work. I think it’s also morbid curiosity. Mostly, I think it’s because I’m weird. I didn’t freak out when I found my neighbor dead in his yard, but I won’t go to funerals because they keep laying the guest of honor out like a Thanksgiving centerpiece and unlike everyone else, I don’t find that comforting.

Anyway. Here are a few death-centric books that you may find fascinating.

Deadhouse: Life in a Coroner’s Office by John Temple- The book follows three deputy coroners -Ed Strimlan, Mike Chichwak, and Tiffani Hunt- working in a coroner’s office in Pittsburgh. We get to know them, their work, their coworkers, some history of both the field and the area they work, and of course, some grisly details about the cases they investigate -and all the hang-ups that come along with investigating, like the sights, the smells, and the politics.

Obviously, the work fascinates me, but I also really enjoy getting to know our three deputy coroners at the heart of the book. What I really like about the book is how we learn about the work through them. This book came out in 2005, I think, and it’s one of the few books I’ve read several times. In fact, I’m about due for another re-read. Can you have a comfort read about a coroner’s office? If you can, I do, and this is it.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons From the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty- As a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and flair for the morbid, Caitlin Doughty took a job in a crematory and quickly found herself pursuing her life’s work. The book provides explanations of the cremation practice, some history involving how people lay their dead to rest, and answers questions you didn’t know you needed the answers to, like how many bodies can you fit in a Dodge van and how do you get cremains out of your clothes?

What I like about this book is that not only is there this demystifying of death happening, but it’s also being demystified by someone as they were learning the ropes of corpse disposal. There were some awkward missteps and she made some mistakes and she owned up to them all in witty fashion. Maybe a book about cremation shouldn’t be amusing, but this one is.

Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden Histories of America’s Cemeteries by Greg Melville- Working in his hometown cemetery in college led Greg Melville to ponder the rich history of America’s burial grounds. He visited several for the book, including Arlington, Hollywood Forever, Boothill Cemetery, Colonial Jewish Burial Ground, Central Park, and Chapel of the Chimes. Each place of eternal rest exhumed more and more of our country’s history and the final resting places of our dead.

When I first saw this book in Bookpages, I realized that I didn’t really know that much about cemeteries beyond the general notion of that’s where we bury people and you can go sledding in the local one. This book is a fascinating tour of graveyards and their impact on and reflection of society. A cemetery’s history is more than just the people buried there. And even though his family wasn’t always enthused about spending time in these places, I was certainly entertained by the experience.

If you give these books a try, I hope you find them enlivening. If you don’t, well then, just bury it and move on.

Turning 44

~ Kiki Writes ~ 4 Comments

For better or worse, I have once again completed another trip around the sun and have hit the magic number of 44. Double digits is always a fun number. I don’t know why. There’s just something bouncy and fun about it.

I would love to have a bouncy and fun 44. I’m not entirely sure what that would look like, but I think it’s something to work for. Maybe.

I admit to being off to a rough start. I had Covid for Christmas and I spent New Year’s Eve/Day blowing my nose. An unfortunate incident involving one of the cats and a glass of wine has slowly made the laptop I bought at the beginning of last year unusable. So, at the beginning of this year I bought yet another new laptop in a fit of frustration and now we all need to cross our fingers that this pretty shiny lasts longer than its predecessor. Trust me, neither I nor my credit card are thrilled with this turn of events, but I gotta do what I gotta do to stay in business.

So, yeah, I closed out 43 a lot harsher than I’d planned, which makes me cautious going into 44.

Good thing I’d already planned on taking baby steps.

This is part of The Remarkable Life Deck work I started last year when I turned 43. It’s a 10 year plan after all, and surprisingly I haven’t gotten bored and wandered off, so here I am at 44 still working on it. Last year, I spent a good chunk of time off and on working through the deck and and answering the questions as honestly as possible. Towards the end of the year, I looked at everything I wrote down and came up with a few baby steps I could take to work my way towards the ideals I’d detailed in the journal.

My idea for 44 is to make it a year of baby steps. Every month, I will take conscious baby steps toward my ultimate goals. I have no idea if this is exactly how you’re supposed to use the deck. The way Debbie Millman describes it is that when she did this, she found things happening as if by magic. I get how manifestation and visualization work, but I also believe that those things don’t happen unless you do things to signal to the Universe that you want them and that you’re ready for them.

These will be my signals. Big ol’ flairs sent up on a monthly basis. I think that’s reasonable. And I don’t think it has to be a drag. It sounds very dry and boring, like doing chores, but I don’t think that it has to be or that it will be. After all, the point of this is to work my way into the life that I want. That’s not dull. There’s joy in that. So, naturally there will be joy in the baby steps.

Maybe it’ll be how I make 44 fun and bouncy after all.

Setting the Vibe for the Year

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I have developed an odd New Year habit.

Even though I usually don’t leave my house for New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, I still put a lot of thought and effort into the outfits that I wear. I want to close out the old year and begin the new one with the right vibe and I do that through my fashion choices.

I can’t remember when I started doing this. Probably around the time I decided it was my New Year’s Eve duty to drink an entire bottle of champagne and toast the New Year appropriately. I can’t remember exactly why I started doing this either. I think I decided that staying home didn’t mean that I couldn’t have fun and dress up. I decided to use it as an excuse to wear outfits I didn’t think I could get away with wearing on an average Tuesday afternoon.

At some point, it morphed into a way to set the vibe for the New Year and it’s become an important part of my celebration. The outfits I choose tend to be funky and a little sexy. They’re fun and colorful and sometimes a little extra. Not at all practical for a night in or a morning after. But that’s kind of the point. It’s a celebration. It’s supposed to be fancy. Just because I’m not out in the streets doesn’t change that. I don’t dress for other people anyway. I dress for me. And when it comes to New Year’s, those outfits set the tone of my year. At least, that’s the intention.

So, when I got Covid this past Christmas, it put my vibe-setting ritual into jeopardy.

The household had done pretty well when it came to avoiding it, but our luck ran out when my roommate brought it home the week before Christmas. She tested positive that Tuesday night and my dad tested positive on Thursday evening. Even with masking and a constant fog of Lysol and hiding in my room as much as possible, I couldn’t hold it off forever, but it did at least take a week to get me. I tested positive on Christmas morning. Ho ho ho.

We were fortunate to get a mild version, my roommate getting it a little worse than the rest of us, my dad faring the best. For me it was like a bad cold. However, I haven’t been sick since before Covid became a thing, so I was way out of practice. It knocked me on my ass for a couple of days. I had a weird sore throat that was almost like an afterthought, spent a couple of days sounding like I was doing an Ursula the Sea Witch impersonation (not a bad thing), and I generated so much mucus I could have skated across the country on my face like a slug. But with a lot of naps, cough drops, and some Puffs with lotion, I bounced back. By Saturday I was feeling well enough to trade my pajamas for lounge clothes. But I wasn’t quite well enough for my New Year’s Eve/Day splendor.

So, instead of closing out 2023 and starting 2024 in some funky threads, I opted for cute and comfy. And a little funky.

That’s a good vibe for 2024, too.

I Impressed Myself This Year

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I know what you’re thinking. You read the title of this post and you thought to yourself (or maybe said out loud as you laughed), “That’s not hard to do!” And for what it’s worth, you’re right. I’m easily impressed. Blame it on the fact that I have somehow managed to retain some childlike wonder, even about the most mundane things like making little changes in my life and the little world that I occupy.

I go into every new year wanting to make changes, wanting things in my little sphere to be different, improved. And usually, I get to the end of that year and nothing has been significantly affected. I have spent years doing this, just being straight up stuck. Its frustrating. I feel like I’m flailing in quicksand and just sinking lower and lower. I acknowledge that much of this is my own fault and the fault of my bad life choice making skills (I also acknowledge the role played by living in a capitalistic society that has a fetish for poverty, bootstraps, and monetizing every aspect of life, but we’re going to focus on me today). Keep doing what you did, you keep getting what you got, right?

This year I chose to do different, so I got different.

Most of these changes were not actually big changes or big decisions and many of them came in the latter part of the year. I sort of think of my Charleston trip as a big turning point in 2023. There’s what I was doing and how I was feeling before Charleston and what I was doing and how I was feeling afterward.

To be honest, I really impressed myself with Charleston. I couldn’t believe I actually did it. Not the actual going on the trip, but the deciding to go on the trip. I’m notorious for wanting to do things, but then putting them off or justifying not doing them. However, my limit had been reached and I was in the mood to do something drastic.

By the time I got on that plane to South Carolina, I was burnt the fuck out. I had a lot of projects going at the end of 2022 and the first part of 2023. Things at the library were hard. Thanks to staff changes, I spent most of the year training new people and working short-handed (that particular shitshow is still ongoing). It felt like I spent most of my time barely achieving the bare minimum of what I needed to get done with no energy for anything else. I was fed the fuck up.

The time away from everything, the physical distance from it, allowed me to gain some new perspective as well as a much needed break. I came home in a better mood and with some baby steps to help me improve my current existence. The real difference this time was that unlike my previous attempts, I actually did the baby steps. I didn’t immediately sink back into the mire of my usual routine. I came up with the plan and then executed said plan. Granted, the plan wasn’t any elaborate scheme, but the fact that I did it -and am still doing it- is progress that I haven’t seen in a long time.

And so far those baby steps have had the desired impact. I’m seeing little improvements. I adjusted my priorities and changed up my schedule and made efforts in certain areas of my life that I wish to improve. Seeing the results of those little changes has encouraged me to keep taking those baby steps.

This sort of thing has a cumulative effect.

By the end of 2024, there’s a good chance I’ll be really impressed.

A Grinchmas Story

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

I’ve probably told this story already on the blog, but I’m too lazy to look it up and besides, who doesn’t like frequently re-told tales? For us old folks, that’s all we got.

Anyway, when I was in my single digits, I shared a room with my younger sister and we had bunk beds. These were not your standard, store-bought bunk beds. My grandfather made us these bunk beds. They were wooden with cubbies built into the head and foot boards for our stuff. They also had larger cubbies on the each end of the bunk bed, which we used as a bookshelf on one end and I think Barbie and My Little Pony storage on the other, if memory serves (and it frequently doesn’t). I had the top bunk and my sister had the bottom.

At Christmastime, my mother would go full ham on the decorations in the house. We rarely put up anything outside, but inside there was Christmas shit everywhere. My mother had a Christmas village that she’d set up on a table. A papermache angel that she’d made in high school would sit in the middle of it (if you even thought about touching it, Santa would give you more than just coal in your stocking). She had crocheted Santa Claus doorknob covers that made it impossible to open doors and the Christmas countdown chain and/or the cotton ball Santa beard countdown among the other decorations we’d bring home from school.

And of course we had a tree. Some years it was in the living room foyer, crowding the front door, which made us grateful we only used it to get the mail. Other years, it’d be put in the dining room near the windows, right next to the bedroom my sister and I shared. I liked those years best because I could fall asleep with the glow of the Christmas tree leaking into our room.

Decorating the tree was a big deal. Like many people, we had a collection of ornaments of sentimental value that always made it onto the tree. I made a Rudolph tree topper in 2nd grade that topped the tree for years. My grandmother had made everyone their own wooden ornaments of various figures, painting them and putting our names on them. Most of them have been lost to time, but I remember I was a rabbit and my sister was a deer. The only ones I still have are my grandpa’s –a drum major- and my grandma’s –a drum. I don’t have a big tree anymore, but I still hang those two ornaments up every year.

My favorite thing, however, was my stocking, which along with my sister’s, was hung on the end of the bunk bed with care.

Over the years, I had a few different stockings, but my favorite was, of course, one that my grandma made. My sister got one, too. For years everything we had was matchy-matchy, but in different colors. Both of our stockings were crocheted with little stuffed snowmen that fit in the top. Mine is green; my sister’s is red.

When Santa still stopped by our house (the presents Santa left under the tree were always the ones my mother didn’t want to wrap), my sister and I would know that he’d been there because after he’d fill our stockings, he’d put our snowmen in bed with us. Of all of my childhood Christmas memories, that’s my favorite. Waking up incredibly early against my will -thanks, Lulu- to find my snowman next to me. My sister and I would then empty our stockings and check out what Santa had brought us before moving on to finding what Santa had left under the tree.

Honestly, it was a brilliant move by mother. The snowman signal allowed us to raid our stockings and bought her a little more time to sleep (our dad worked nights at the time, so he usually got home around the same time we woke up our mother to officially start Christmas). It also created some extra special holiday magic that I still think about to this day.

Fortunately, I found our old stockings years ago and I sent my sister’s to her. I hang up mine every year on my bedroom door. I’ve had to sew up some holes and sew Frosty’s eye back on, but it’s otherwise in pretty good shape.

Santa doesn’t stop by my house anymore, so I don’t wake up to find Frosty in bed with me on Christmas morning, but that stocking still has some magic left to it.

It’s filled with Christmas memories.