Grandma Knows Best

Author Wade Rouse reflects on how our pets can keep us cosmically connected to loved ones and the memories of Christmases past.

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My grandma Viola was a poor Ozarks seamstress who scrimped and saved to make every Christmas merry. She sewed so many gifts that visitors had to cut a path through the presents just to glimpse the wooden manger scene beneath her tree. Over the years the donkey and a few Wise Men went missing, so I replaced them with tiny Snoopy dogs. (A fitting swap, since our beagle, Racer, was responsible for the vanishings.) My grandma loved that miscast manger even more. "Life’s as short as one blink of God’s eye," she told me, "Christmas is our annual Godwink to remember that."