This is Deidre, sharing my best memory with you this fine Christmas morning.

Years upon years ago, it was my turn for the almost inevitable bout of pink eye that every kid gets at some point. I woke up, probably minutes after my parents went to bed, ready to greet the Christmas bounty… with my eyes stuck shut. I was probably seven at the time, and this temporary blindness was as far from character building as it could possibly be. As I mewled and scratched, my older brother (also up, of course) retrieved my stocking from the mantle and helped me as I examined my loot by touch. I know I never would have reached in to the fun fur and felt - he was a stinker and I had long ago developed a fear of putting my hands anywhere I couldn’t see them. He must have handed me presents, one by one, helping me guess what each object was.

It was a year of Kliban cats - one of my stocking stuffers was a cartoon-a-page book of black and white cartoons with sometimes titillating drawings of ‘boobies and butts’. My brother lay next to me on the orange and black shag carpeting and read the captions aloud, describing the drawings, and holding the book for me as I tried to peer through gummy lashes.

The book is long gone. The image of a naked woman sitting on a chair with a leg outstretched and a long cat covering her leg from hip to heel is so ingrained that I could probably draw it line for line. And my brother, the same kid who shut me in closets and played “stop hitting yourself”, is now a stepfather and step-grandfather with a family that benefits from his depths of kindness, thoughtfulness, and reliability every day.

And only the occasional mild prank.

Happy holidays to you and all of yours.