The Gift
It is Christmas Eve 2009. Christmas means a lot of different things to many people. The transformative and renewing aspects of the holiday have always struck me with the most repetitive sort of impact. Each year it is the same, yet different. This season was a case in point along that theorem. I pondered that earlier this evening as my girlfriend Donna and I hummed along upcoast in our little Mazdaspeed, under the fading amber afterglow of a brilliant day, this eve before Christmas. The Channel Islands stood in purple shadow relief, as bright streaks of warm color stroked the