The year I turned eight, we spent Christmas with Grandma Long. She was my mother's mother. She was very old, close to a hundred in fact. As a bride of the Great Depression, she'd birthed seven children at home and lost three of them to diseases I was vaccinated for. Mother said their deaths had changed her heart.

I believed her, because the Grandma I knew was mean to everyone. Everyone except Boots, her big gray tomcat with white paws.

She wasn't the kind of grandma who held you on her lap, only Boots got to sit on her lap. She was the kind of grandma who held you to standards of adult behavior when you were only eight.

The only room of her house that was heated was the sitting room. It had a big gas fireplace flanked by two walnut rockers her brother had made her as a wedding gift. A daybed piled high with quilts sat against the back wall. When she wasn't napping, that's where the guests sat. Adult guests, that is. Kids were to be seen and not heard. While Boots sat on her lap, we sat at her feet on a hand-hooked rug.

She was always baking something so the oven kept the kitchen warm. The bathroom was above the kitchen, and all the other rooms were cold as ice, especially the bedrooms.

She heated the beds upstairs with hot water bottles. She'd stick one under the covers at the bottom of the bed, which was really rather effective, once you stopped shaking and the shivers wore off.

I hated sleeping at Grandma's house, because I had to share a bed with Betsy, my baby sister. We fought so much Daddy called us The Cinderella Sisters. She had nails like razor blades and kicked like a mule. I snored, so neither of us slept much when we had to sleep together.

We were always forced upstairs to go to bed before it was even dark. It always happened the same way. Grandma Long would let out a big sigh and say, "I've had my fill of you kids. Let's get you off to bed."

Long after we were tucked away upstairs, the grown-ups were still swapping stories downstairs. Their laughter wafted up the steps and laid down in the hall next to the aromas of butter cookies and strong coffee.

It was a wild night outside that Christmas Eve. Sleet slashed at the single-pane windows, mountain smoke drifted up from the river, and angry West Virginia winds were chasing gray clouds around the sky like a sheriff after moonshiners.

Betsy and I couldn't sleep for all the laughter, so we pulled the homemade curtains back to watch for Santa Claus and prayed he knew we were there.

Just as our eyes could stay awake no longer, a star, not Santa Claus, appeared in the sky. Betsy, who was destined be a pastor like our Daddy, clapped her tiny hands and said, "Look Sister! It's God's star and it's so bright, the dark can't cover it!"

My sister died just before Christmas last year.

As I remember her words now, I realize that even at five years of age, she was a deep soul who had it figured out right:

When God's light reigns in our hearts, the darkness cannot overcome it.

Night Vision

I have awful night vision.

And with the end of Daylight Savings Time, the darkness feels really dark, and it always arrives before I'm ready for it.

But, my elderly Jack Russell, Mr. Pip,

HAS TO HAVE a late-night constitutional if I want an accident-free dawn. So, every night I bundle up against the cold and try to figure out which way he's headed. It's like snipe hunting at summer camp.

Fortunately, I have a fancy flashlight.

Last night when we were out, I heard a cat crying.

and immediately, my mind built a story about a tiny calico cat, stuck way up in a tree, scared to death in the pitch-black night.

I opened the back gate and wobbled partway down the river bank,

balanced myself on a granite outcropping, shone my light this way and that and called, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty!" My calls were met with silence.

But the movement disoriented me.

The riverbank no longer felt like my domain. I struggled to make sense of trees and granite outcroppings, while grapevines as thick as my wrist swayed in the wind like rainforest anacondas looking for a snack.

My heart was pounding, I began to sweat.

Footsteps crunched in the leaves behind me!

What was that?

I focused my light on the ground behind me, only to see Mr. Pip carefully tiptoeing toward me.

My flashlight hit a poplar tree, and two enormous eyes blinked at me.

Aha! There was the cat!

Only the eyes didn't belong to a cat.

I was staring into the face of a juvenile screech owl. His grey ear tufts blended perfectly with the grey of the tree bark.

We blinked at each other,

and he flew on silent wings in a huff.

I slowly climbed back up the bank,

through the English ivy and wild rose briars that clung to my pants. I made it into the yard, and closed the gate.

There's a lot of winter left.

The nights are dark and sometimes the days feel even darker so I'm grateful for my flashlight.

It's always a good thing to have some night vision.

I was a preacher's child, so I grew up in churches.

I spent a lot of time looking at stained glass windows on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings.

Not because my Daddy's sermons were boring.
But because preachers practice their sermons like singers working on a song, and when you've heard the same one several times, your mind tends to wander when you hear it again.

Some of the stained-glass windows were inspiring, some were bland, and still others were works of art.

Take the glorious Tiffany windows I starred at for hours as a senior in high school for instance. They radiated religion out into the world with their intricate patterns and rich, jewel-tone colors. I remember wanting to wear Mary's blue velvet dress to the prom.

During middle school, I starred at geometric squares of harvest gold and avocado green in the sanctuary of a coal-country church. They matched the appliances in our kitchen.

When I was in first grade, the church had windows that were tinted a pale white.

They were just like the windows in the bathroom at school: frosted to keep peeping Toms from watching little girls pull up their skirts.

My son grew up in churches, too.
He's 30 now and he was telling a friend of mine that he knew she was important to him because her color was in his soul.

Intrigued, she said, "What do you mean by that?"
He answered, "Well, when we take out first breath, our souls are crystal clear.

Then life happens to us.
Each person we meet adds their color to our soul. Some people touch us with love and soft colors, others touch our minds or imagination and splatter us with vibrant colors. And, of course, meanness and sorrow add the dark colors that make the shadows in our soul."

Love and beauty, sorrow and pain.

These are the things that change our crystal-clear souls into colorful stained-glass.