It had been our best Christmas in recent memory. My son and his new bride had not been home for five years due to the constraints of his location at the far end of America and the jealous whims of his first begrudging wife, the United States Army. Even so, we have learned to greedily take what we have been given and to make the best of our far too infrequent face-to-face encounters. One lives with the hand one is dealt. Every parent who has grown grey watching their little ones cycle through the fleeting Christmas mornings only to watch stoically as the world takes them into its indifferent embrace, knows of what I speak. The smile that refuses to hide the tears and the mask that futilely veils the shallow despair of watching them disappear into an airport terminal are both invariably broken by the utter silence of two aging souls who are left only with each other to find consolation in. As such, the ghosts of tiny laughter spills over their bounds into the halls of that great house...(Read Full Post)