Is it just me, or is this week flying by?  I think the swiftness of my days is in direct relation to how much I still don't have ready for Christmas.  Somehow that extra week after Thanksgiving lulled me into a sense of having more time to do my gift shopping and wrapping, and now the 25th seems way too close. Where are those darned elves when you really need them?!

My Christmas memory today centers around the jolly Santa card you see above.  I found this Christmas card tucked in a box last year, and when I opened the card I discovered it was the note that "Santa" had left for me along with my brand spanking new pink and white Schwinn bike the year I turned ten.  I was so excited to get the bike but the funny thing about the card was...it was signed by Santa but was in my father's very distinctive handwriting!  Thus was my introduction to who Santa really was.  Since my dad had recently passed, finding this card meant so much and for the last two years the card has been nestled in among my tree branches, where I can remember both my wonderful father and the true spirit of Santa. 

Off to school on my trusty Schwinn (check out the basket!).  My mother made my dress--isn't it cute?!  

William Stafford, poet laureate of Oregon,  shares his love of biking in his poem below:

MAYBE ALONE ON MY BIKE

I listen, and the mountain lakes
hear snowflakes come on those winter wings
only the owls are awake to see,
their radar gaze and furred ears
alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;

And I have thought (maybe alone
on my bike, quaintly on a cold
evening pedaling home), Think!--
the splendor of our life, its current unknown
as those mountains, the scene no one sees.

O citizens of our great amnesty:
we might have died. We live. Marvels
coast by, great veers and swoops of air
so bright the lamps waver in tears,
and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.

I hope you have a good day--are you closer to being prepared for Christmas than I am?  I'd love to hear from you!