Unlike many but not most of you, I have reached the age when I can look back on a myriad of memories.

[USAGE Myriad is derived from a Greek noun and adjective meaning ‘ten thousand.’ It was first used in English as a noun in reference to a great but indefinite number. The adjectival sense of ‘countless, innumerable’ appeared much later. In modern English, use of myriad as a noun and adjective are equally standard and correct, despite the fact that some traditionalists consider the adjective as the only acceptable use of the word. Online Dictionary.]

I was nine years old when the war (WWII) started and my father was young enough to be called active. He had been in the Reserve because he had served in a Tank Corps in World War One. This time he was a medical doctor and required to serve as head of a CCS (Casualty Clearing Station). He served first in Canada, testing dry-cold weather conditions in anticipation of the fighting advancing into Russia. When Russia switched sides, he moved to England and got as far as The Netherlands.

I go into this detail because of the Christmas present my father sent to me from Prince Rupert, B.C. He gave me a hairbrush, a prototype with very new materials: pink plastic and nylon bristles and a far cry from the largesse he had been used to give/pay for and my mother purchased and that I had been spoiled to receive during the civilian Christmases of my young life. I cherished the brush until long after I stopped brushing my hair with it as the handle cracked and the bristles fell out. I guess that’s when I really stopped believing in Santa Claus, a myth I had clung to far beyond what current children do.

I realized what my father had done as he confronted his first Christmas without family – in Prince Rupert, for heaven’s sake-- with very little money compared to his income as a doctor though still with a wife, two children and two mortgages. He went to a store and bought a new state-of-the-art girl’s hairbrush and he bought stamps and mailed it, in time for Christmas. My mother must have gift-wrapped it. You can imagine how important it was to me.

So, I have been thinking of the important gifts from Christmas past that I have received. And I have to stop now and change my summer sheets and duvet for winter comfort.

Miles to go before I sleep….