She is eighty-eight years old, she reminds me, my small, scrunched-up mother, as round as Santa with hair as white and fluffy as his beard. “The tenth of February, I’ll be eighty-nine,” she announces. The car clock says it’s 1:55 as we begin the one hundred-mile trip to my house for Christmas. This is our tradition since my dad has been gone, six years. Two years ago my brother David died. This year I am divorced. It’s hard to keep traditions going. I punch buttons on the radio, trying to find Christmas songs. I settle for a country station that plays oldies – Willie Nelson’s twangy “On the Road Again.” Serendipity. “Belle has the same birthday as me, the tenth of February. She’s sixty and I’m eighty-eight,” Mother says. “She embroidered twenty-seven pillowcases for Christmas presents. My eyesight’s not good enough to do hand-work anymore.” All of this before we leave the city limits. We pass the funeral h
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