The Snow Globe

Outside their window the snow is falling. One of two sisters, not eighteen years old between then, has ventured out from under her mom's chenille blankets. There's no heat upstairs and the floors are bare wood, worn to a fine patina from generations of use.

Downstairs the fireplace is going. The crackle and scent of smoke mixes with the smell of pine from the tall Christmas tree across the room, by the turn in the stairs. The red and green lights and the little touch of heat they give off are turned off until morning.

Outside the wood siding needs painting, hopefully next year the mother hopes. Down at the end of the snow-covered Main Street is the bank the holds the house's mortgage, and what little is in the checking account. A train whistle blows in the distance, muffled by the falling snow. The youngest daughter has written a poem for school about the train. Part of the poem being "I hear it at sunrise, I hear it at night. I hear it amid storms and know all is all right". Her father works for the railroad.

It's 1945, and somewhere halfway around the world the father of the two little girls is somewhere in a place called Germany. The one girl, the oldest of the two, is careful not to wake their mother up. The child has too much on her mind for someone her age. She's thinking in places her mother tells her not to think in.

Come morning, a gift their father sent them, along with their mother's pancakes, will let the unhappy be forgotten for little while. Their mother puts the radio on to a special Christmas broadcast. Bing Crosby is the first voice over the radio:

"....Ill be home for Christmas, If only in my dreams".

Dad will be home by next Christmas. And Holiday worries will eventually turn to Christmas memories. One day the two daughters will sit by the fireplace as they unwrap their child's presents. Their grandfather's service photo lovingly kept on the mantle.

Halloween to New Year’s: A time to celebrate life, our many blessings and to give thanks for family and friends that gather near. We remember those who gather with us now only in our hearts and memories. It all goes by so fast, gone in a flash of gold, orange and white. Gold for the change in the seasons; orange to remind us of pumpkins, ghost stories, and those humid Halloween masks that for one night, made us into our childhood heroes or the monsters under our beds that dad always had to chase away. White for the coming of the first snowball fights, sledding and crunching footprints in the snow. Our very first snowman was as crooked as the branches under the weight of the frozen snow. But who was prouder, our parents or us. A memory on the path of childhood memories, that leads back to home and happy days of childhood yore. 

       Soon to come was Santa. Ok we admit it; we went for the man in the red suit coming down the chimney bit hook line and a plate of Santa’s cookies. We were raised on flying reindeer and dancing snowmen and admitted with a smile. 

       All might not have been right in the world. But when we sang along to “Here comes Santa Claus”, the whole world was safe, warm, and smelled of buttered popcorn. With New Year’s, life moved on. Ahead lay new memories to be made and new challenges to be met….

       We learned fast that life was not as soft as the new fallen snow, or as warm as mom’s Chenille blankets. We look at our children’s footprints in the snow and remember when those were our footprints. We could not walk in those little prints now if we tried. We try to follow where our parent’s steps trailed off and wonder what they would do if they were standing where we stand now. We did not take their advice back then. Oh! What we would give for that advice now.

     Oh! If we could step inside that snow globe of our childhood again, if only for a moment…..

Years on, the daughters will remember their father, and all the men who served with a Memorial Day prayer:

The world was in darkness, as dark as it had ever

been in history

An evil hand threatened to take away the light of Freedom

We can never comprehend how such evil can exist in the world

Nor can we comprehend how God, in his almighty powers, created enough love, honor, and courage to drive the men he would send to rescue freedom from evil

We call them heroes

They do not call themselves heroes

These were scared lads, eighteen years old, nineteen years old; twenty years old

Some had lied about their age to join the fight

They all knew that they might not survive the wall of gun fire that they were about to march into

But with a love greater than self they all went

They came from every walk of life

From every nationality

They came together, to cross a stormy sea

To land on beaches where gunfire and screams pierced the air

And all that was death lay in wait beyond the beaches, at the top of the cliffs

The beaches would quickly be covered in carnage

But our sons, pride of our nation, kept crossing those beaches, and climbed those cliffs

Where gunfire and screams pierced the air

Many fell

Sons, brothers, fiancés, kept coming

Many more would fall

But a world was finally saved

Time passes

We look upon those cliffs and beaches that are so peaceful now

It’s so easy to forget a time when gunfire and screams

pierced the air

It’s so easy to ignore the ghosts that linger here

With every passing year, more of the men that fought in the most destructive war in history rejoin their comrades that will forever be eighteen, nineteen, and twenty

They pray to us that we never forget