Christmas without a tree, without the lights and the tinsel; no shopping even or presents to wrap – it was wonderful.  The children were 18, 17, 16, 15 and 14 – yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking but we were a newly blended family – I didn’t produce all those kids myself.  If I had I probably wouldn’t be here to remember that Christmas.\

We were a rather strange blended family in that we didn’t have to blend all that much.  One son and daughter lived in western Ontario; their father, my husband, lived in eastern Ontario; the other three children and I lived in northern Ontario – three points of a triangle, with a thousand miles between each point. This was our new age family.

The hectic holiday season approached – as you might imagine, ours could be either quite hectic, or very quiet and a bit lonely.  But that year my husband Continue reading “Christmas Past”