{"id":222,"date":"2009-12-22T15:32:08","date_gmt":"2009-12-22T20:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karencasey.wordpress.com\/?p=222"},"modified":"2009-12-22T15:32:08","modified_gmt":"2009-12-22T20:32:08","slug":"our-memories-give-our-lives-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.womens-spirituality.com\/?p=222","title":{"rendered":"Our memories give our lives meaning."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As children, most of us made a list of \u00a0the things we wanted from Santa. \u00a0I painstakingly \u00a0wrote him a letter every year, in fact. \u00a0Until grade three, at the top of my list was a doll, and not just an ordinary doll. \u00a0I had poured over the Sear&#8217;s catalogue for weeks looking at the details of each doll pictured, imagining her in my arms. \u00a0My mother was careful to observe my final pick. \u00a0Of course I never knew why. \u00a0And what a surprise on Christmas morning that Santa had selected the very one I wanted. \u00a0I had written sundry other things on the list too but none were as important as the doll, unless it was a crib or a buggy for her to ride in. Santa generally gave me a sweater and some socks but they hardly caught my eye, that is until my mother insisted I put them on to wear to Grandma&#8217;s where we got more presents and ate Christmas dinner with all our relatives.<\/p>\n<p>I used to dream for days about Santa arriving at our house on Christmas eve. \u00a0It never dawned on me that we had no chimney for him to come down. \u00a0I was certain I could hear his sleigh on our roof nonetheless. \u00a0And the cookies and milk were always gone the next morning. \u00a0He was magic, for sure. \u00a0What fun to recall the good memories.<\/p>\n<p>As I got older and my own life took a few bad turns, I didn&#8217;t make many good memories for a while. \u00a0Getting back on track, where the good memories are getting created again, has been a blessing for sure. \u00a0However, I still return to the fond memories of my childhood those last few days before Christmas. \u00a0As I sit and enjoy the tree and the lights in my home, my heart returns to the tree of my youth at 827. \u00a0I still see the manger we had under our tree. \u00a0In fact, I still have the tiny sleigh and cotton Santa we had under the tree as part of my table decoration. \u00a0This keeps the good memories intact. \u00a0And this is as it should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As children, most of us made a list of \u00a0the things we wanted from Santa. \u00a0I painstakingly \u00a0wrote him a letter every year, in fact. \u00a0Until grade three, at the top of my list was a doll, and not just an ordinary doll. \u00a0I had poured over the Sear&#8217;s catalogue for weeks looking at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[44,66,107,145],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-karens-musings","tag-christmas","tag-dolls","tag-holiday-memories","tag-memories"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Our memories give our lives meaning. | Karen Casey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.womens-spirituality.com\/?p=222\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our memories 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