Painting by Garnet Goldman

When I was young, I didn’t understand how a man could go out in public wearing shorts and shoes with black socks. The dictates of fashion were clear. With shorts, the acceptable options included sandals with no socks and casual shoes with white socks. Black crew socks were a definite misstep, and regular shoes worn with over-the-calf black socks were an absolute affront. How could a grown man commit such a fashion transgression?

Did he simply not know any better? Did he have no self-respect? And what about the wives of husbands who gallivanted about in public like that? Were they perturbed? Were they suffering in silence? Or had they grabbed their husbands by the ankles and begged them not to bring shame on the family by sallying forth thus attired?

Getting married gave me a sense of where at least one wife stands in such matters. Garnet regularly lets attire that someone less charitable might call too casual go unremarked. She says nothing when I head out to such places as the hardware store dressed in sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt bought in 1987. Only when I’m going somewhere a tad more formal will she gently suggest corrective action.

“You know, you look really good in your green shirt,” she may say. “Have you thought about wearing it?” Or perhaps, “You do know that T-shirt that has holes under the arms, don’t you?” Ever helpful, Doobins may say, “Yeah, they remind me of the Grand Canyon.”

Because I considered the shorts-and-black-socks combination beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior, I had no notion of where Garnet might stand on that particular issue. And then came the day this past summer when I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed with a pair of black crew socks in hand and my sandals on the floor. When I realized what I was on the verge of doing, I stopped, momentarily aghast. As I thought about it, though, it came to me: “You know, I don’t care anymore.”

At long last, I saw that I might have been wrong about those men. It had nothing to do with a lack of self-respect. While I had been wondering how they could trample over the fashion sensibilities of countless others, they may have simply been living free from the constraints of fashion rules they didn’t care about. Exhilarated by a sense of newfound freedom, I slipped on the black socks and sandals and headed out into the world.

Garnet said nothing about me joining the Shorts with Black Socks Club. The only time she has brought up socks at all was the morning I came home from a yard sale wearing shorts and sandals with a black sock on one foot and no sock on the other. When she asked what was going on, I told her that one sock that had gotten wet and that I had taken it off but that taking off the remaining sock seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

“You were out in public with one sock on and one sock off?” she said. “I’m impressed.”

By Garnet Goldman

We don’t own a dishwasher, which is fine with me. I don’t particularly enjoy washing pots with caked food that puts up a struggle. For the most part, though, I like washing dishes. It clears the mind and provides a sense of accomplishment not so readily found elsewhere. One minute, you’re holding a Garfield glass with a puddle of milk at the bottom that no self-respecting 9-year-old would dream of using. The next minute, you’re holding a shiny, clean glass eager to be called into service for Mr. Doobins’ next glass of refreshing milk.

The other day, two slender crystal glasses were among the dishes sitting on the counter waiting to be washed. Although they were sold as liqueur glasses, we use them primarily for the kids’ M&M treats. The danger with M&M’s, of course, is that, once you start eating them, you keep on eating them until the bag is empty. By filling each of the glasses with M&M’s for Sparkle Girl and Doobins, we have some hope of limiting the amount they eat. Plus, the M&M’s look really good in those glasses. The glasses have been in my life for more than 30 years. I bought them when I was living in San Francisco to use for Frangelico.

I don’t think about San Francisco every time I look at them but, this time, I did. I like having things that are both satisfying on their own and that have the power to trigger pleasant memories. When the M&M glasses are clean, they share a shelf with two blue ceramic bowls that I bought on a particularly fun day-trip poking around pottery studios in Seagrove. That shelf has a lot of memory triggers. It also serves as home to plates, bowls, cups and mugs that once belonged to Garnet’s beloved grandmother Debo.

At Christmas, I pull out a ceramic bowl that my friend Mike Callaghan made. It was one of my favorites, and, after it got dropped I couldn’t bear to throw it out. So I glued it back together. When you fill it with Christmas ornaments, you don’t see the scars. Down in our basement is an electric shoe buffer that belonged to my grandfather Daddy Ralph. It has rotating heads at each end covered with what makes me think of shag carpeting. The black buffer is for black shoes and the red one for brown shoes. I don’t ever use it but it reminds me of Daddy Ralph and of the days when polishing my shoes on Saturday was an integral part of getting ready for church on Sunday.

Draped on the couch in the living room is a bright, cheerful quilt – yellow is the dominant color – that someone my father had helped gave him when I was a teen-ager. When I went off to college, he gave it to me to use on my bed there. Ever since, the quilt has gone with me wherever I moved. I don’t think of my father every time I look at the quilt. But sometimes I do, and the memory is a little gift.

Flight into Egypt by Garnet Goldman

I know you need turkey to make Thanksgiving official and, without question, a freshly roasted turkey looks and smells great.

I care about turkey on Thanksgiving mainly, though, because it’s essential for making gravy. For me, the true heart of the meal is stuffing and mashed potatoes awash in gravy. Other particularly appealing attractions include the green-bean casserole, ham and the hot sauce for the ham that I make using my grandmother’s recipe. Oh, my!

All of which means that, although I like turkey just fine the rest of the year, on Thanksgiving, I’m reluctant to squander valuable space on the plate – and in the stomach – that could be more productively devoted to other treasures. So I take just enough turkey to make the plate official.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. And not just because of the pumpkin pie. I like its simplicity. I’m all for giving thanks. I have found, time and again, that remembering to focus on being grateful can have an almost magical power to transform my attitude. One second, I’m mired in some swamp of negativity. I remember to be thankful for something, and, instantly, I’m in the neighborhood of chipper.

Ultimately, I think, gratitude is closer to the truth of life than ingratitude is. One of the things I appreciate about Garnet is that, throughout the year, she is really good about prompting me to remember to be grateful. I will be complaining about some irritation or perceived wrong, and she will say, “We have a lot to be grateful for.” If I’m really hot about something, I might shrug that off. More often, it shifts my perspective.

Certainly, I have a lot for which to be grateful. Some of the gifts I have been given, such as Garnet and the kids, are right in front of my face every day. Day to day, I may not think about many others. Some of those gifts are quite profound, such as being born to parents who put the life of the spirit at the center of their lives. In general, I have had amazingly good fortune when it comes to family, friends, neighbors and the other people in my life. Thanksgiving is a good time to stop and remember to give thanks for such remarkable gifts.

This Thanksgiving, I also want to give thanks for all the work that people I will never meet have done – the people who invented air conditioning and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as well as the countless people who did all the work of inventing words and reaching a consensus on a common language. Can you imagine how much more troublesome everyday life would be if we were still arguing about what to call a tree?

And I want to give thanks for the unexpected bonuses that life delivers. The other day, Mr. Doobins stepped on something as we were walking across a shopping-center parking lot, and, once we got to the car, the first order of business was wiping it off his shoe. He inherited his mother’s keen sense of smell, and, afterward, he said, “Phew! That smelled like a dead horse rubbed with a cigar.”

Here’s hoping that all of your Thanksgiving smells are far more savory.

In the car one day, I was griping to Garnet about the vexing behavior of politicians in Washington when Sparkle Girl piped up from the back seat that she thought they should move the capital to Hawaii. With everything being so beautiful in Hawaii, she thought, people would automatically treat each other better there.

An excellent idea, I said. A little while later, Sparkle Girl asked whether there was any chance that, if they started working on it now, the capital could be in Hawaii by next year. Wondering where that question came from, I said, “Why do you ask?”

“Well, at school, the eighth-grade class goes to our nation’s capital,” she said. Ah. All became clear. If the capital were in Hawaii a year from now, Sparkle Girl would get to go to the place that, in recent days, has topped her list of places she wants to visit one day. (By “one day,” I mean “tomorrow if we would let her.”)

It galls Sparkle Girl that, at the advanced age of 12, she can still count on the fingers of one hand the states she has visited and that she has yet to set foot outside of the United States. With her mother and me showing no signs of slaking her thirst for travel by, say, booking her on a “Penguins of Antarctica” or “Paris in the Spring” tour, she bides her time until we come to our senses by adding to her list of places that offer fun possibilities. Someone tells a story about the grandeur of Yosemite, and she says, “Ooh! I want to go there.” Savoring a piece of kappa maki sushi, she imagines that the sushi in Japan must be even tastier and decides that she wants to pop over on the trip she has long been planning to China.

Mr. Doobins has expressed zero desire to join his sister on any of her travels. In his imagination, he thinks nothing of zipping across galaxies to planets light years away to quell beasts terrorizing the locals. On Earth, though, he enjoys being at home. More than once, he has turned down the offer of a trip to Mayberry for a scoop of ice cream because staying put was more attractive.

One day, as he lounged on our bed with crossed legs and fingers laced behind his head as he leaned back on the pillows, he announced that he liked living here and that he planned to stay with us forever. The day may come, though, when staying with us looks different. Animals that Garnet considers “dear” hold the same allure for her that far-flung places hold for Sparkle Girl, and she wants to have far more than a dog and cat one day. (See the “tomorrow” note above.) Undeterred by my observation that a herd of Nubian goats would, no doubt, run afoul of city ordinances, she has been talking about getting land in the country once both kids graduate from high school.

Maybe Mr. Doobins could keep the house in Winston-Salem and I could slip out for a visit at feeding time.

A new dog has joined our family. Her name is Faye.

A woman with an animal-rescue group in Mocksville found Faye on the side of the road. When we went out to Mocksville to meet Faye, I asked the woman why she had named her that.

“She looked like a Faye,” the woman said.

We thought so, too, and kept the name.

As with every found-on-the-side-of-the-road dog, background is pure speculation. She looks like what you might get if Italian greyhound genes were put in charge of the legs, and overall size and yellow Labrador retriever genes were put in charge of the coloration, the head and the disposition. When Garnet saw the expression on a fawn the other day, she decided that Faye must have some deer genes as well.

As soon as Faye came into the house, she made it clear that she was Garnet’s dog. She awarded equal second-tier status to Sparkle Girl and Doobins. I have the No. 4 position all to myself.

That’s fine with me. Still feeling the loss of His Dogness, I felt a floaty detachment around Faye in those early days. I don’t know whether that played a role or whether she was simply destined to be Garnet’s dog. In any case, I’m happy that Garnet and the kids are happy. And I still get to take a dog for walks without having to fret about somehow being disloyal to Buster’s memory.

Getting a new dog happened sooner than I expected. If it had been up to Sparkle Girl and Doobins, we would have gone out the next day and gotten a new dog. I told them, though, that I needed a little time. They understood that. Every now and then one of them would ask whether I was ready yet. No, I would say.

Then one Saturday afternoon I said I could start looking. Our list of specific requirements was short. Certainly, we wanted a dog that everyone liked. His Dogness had been a tad big for Mr. Doobins, and he wanted a dog more his size. Garnet wanted an affectionate dog. Sparkle Girl was easy. As long as it was a dog she liked, she didn’t care about size, color or breed.

I expected the process to take a while. As it happened, we met Faye the next day. From the beginning, she fit right in. Garnet keeps going around saying, “She’s an angel.” I wouldn’t go that far. She makes funny noises sometimes when she dreams and, for reasons that remain a mystery, she is skittish around a friend who is one of the sweetest people around.

But we were definitely lucky. Not a single “uh-oh” characteristic has presented itself, and Poos the cat is OK with the arrangement. The Official Cat Code of Conduct required Poos to express disgruntlement for a couple of days. But, once he fulfilled those obligations, we came in on the scene of Faye and Poos stretched out with Poos’ tail flicking back and forth across Faye’s face.

I knew that any agreements Sparkle Girl and Doobins made about taking responsibility for feeding and walking Faye wouldn’t necessarily hold up, but I thought it was important to have them on the record. As it turned out, both have been really good about taking care of her.

From time to time, Mr. Doobins feels burdened by his responsibilities. But that can be quite entertaining. Because I am the first person up most days, I usually take Faye out for her morning walk. When I got up one morning, Mr. Doobins was already up. I told him that he was coming with us. Wanting a more leisurely approach to the day, he declined. I told him that I wasn’t offering that option.

Once we were on the sidewalk, I told him that he could be in charge of picking up newspapers and putting them on people’s porches, something that I routinely do. That made him feel even more put upon, and, as he carried the first paper up to the porch, he said, “I’m getting older by the minute.”

A couple of days later, he was up when I got up again. Stunned by his run of ill fortune when I told him that he was coming with us, he said, “I’m only going to walk on one foot.”

We put His Dogness to sleep.

When my friend Mike found Buster, as His Dogness was known around the house, standing on the side of the road in Stokes County, the vet estimated that Buster was 1 to 1½ years old. Add that to the 16 years that he was with me and he was at least 17 — an impressive run for a 50-pound dog.

Buster was a good friend.

When he came into my life, I was in a rough patch and looking for a dog, in part, because I thought taking it on serious walks might make me feel better. Mike knew that, and, when he saw Buster looking as if he was waiting for a bus, Mike picked him up and called me.

“I found your dog,” he said.

He had indeed.

I was glad that Buster was a boy dog because I wanted to be able to name my dog after Buster Keaton, the comedian whose movies had made me laugh during an earlier rough patch. Having Buster around made a big difference. When I came home from work, he would give me a first-class greeting at the door, and we would go for a walk in Old Salem.

Buster was an idiosyncratic dog. When he saw a vapor trail, he would bark and bark. My neighbor, Mr. Whitfield, liked to joke that an alien space ship had accidentally left Buster behind and he was barking to get their attention.

At some point, Buster decided he would no longer drink water inside the house. If he was thirsty, he had to go out and drink from the stainless-steel bowl that birds liked to use to bathe.

Mostly, though, he was remarkably easygoing. Sometimes on walks, when he stopped to sniff something, I would start looking at the clouds. After a minute or two, I might come back to Earth to find Buster patiently standing there, waiting for me to finish my reveries.

I always thought it was too bad that Garnet, Sparkle Girl and Doobins never knew the young, carefree Buster. By the time they came along, he was struggling — stiffness in his hips, deafness, failing eyesight. Kidney failure was the big one. Eventually, the build-up of toxins in his system led to what looked a lot like dementia.

Sometimes, I would come upon Buster standing in the corner, staring at the wall. Other times, he would flip out, frantically scratching at the front door as if he hadn’t been out in hours and hours, even though, minutes ago, we had just come in from a walk.

Even though dealing with him after he got sick could be trying, Garnet, Sparkle Girl and Doobins came to love him, too. When Buster was in distress, Doobins took a lot of responsibility for trying to make things better for him, and Garnet was a sucker for those moments when he would come up and burrow his head into her looking for a scratch.

As his condition worsened, I spent a lot of time fretting about whether the misery he was experiencing was offset by the times when he was enjoying his life.

After a particularly bad day during which he could not find comfort, it was clear that it was time.

My friend Mike died some months back, and Buster being gone made me feel the loss of Mike even more acutely. I would have liked nothing more than to drive up to Stokes County and sit with Mike on his porch.

It helped when my friend Lauren said she liked to imagine Mike and Buster taking a walk together in heaven.

Garnet and the kids took Buster’s loss harder than I expected. In pondering that, I came to think it had something to do with self-centeredness, somehow thinking that nobody else appreciated him as much as I did.

Doobins and I were in the car one day when, without preamble, Doobins said, “I wish I was in heaven with Buster.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. Deflecting it a bit seemed like a good idea, so I said, “What did you like about Buster?”

“I liked that I loved him,” Doobins said.

I had expected something more mundane, and, at first, his statement struck me as nonsensical.

You don’t just love something — you have reasons for loving it.

The more I thought about it, though, the more profound it seemed.

Although we may be able to name this or that reason, in the end, we care about something because of what it brings out in us — joy, a sense of satisfaction, love.

I miss Buster. At the same time, I am grateful that I have Garnet, Sparkle Girl and Doobins to share that loss. When Buster came into my life, I didn’t know that such a gift awaited me.

GROW YOUR LOVE by Garnet Goldman

To my sleep-fogged mind, the noise that woke me in the middle of the night sounded like cats fighting outside the bedroom window. A moment of quiet followed. Then, a noise unlike the first broke the silence. This one had an even eerier edge to it, and I found myself imagining ghosts and ripping shrouds. A moment later, I identified the source of the mystery noises. They were coming from the stomach of Faye, the dog asleep at the foot of the bed.

That wasn’t the first time that Faye’s nocturnal broadcasts have awakened me. In the middle of the night, such gastric turmoil can be unsettling. More than once, I woke up worrying that some mishap had befallen the children. Once I’m awake, the sounds can be entertaining. Their variety is remarkable. No gastric muttering sounds like any that has come before.

On this particular night, as the assorted clangings and swooshings burbled along, it occurred to me that some sound-effects technician might pay good money for a recording of Faye’s stomach in action. In the light of day, the enterprise lost its appeal. Should I ever decide to record household sounds, I think I could better serve the world by recording Doobins when he’s watching The Three Stooges or some other show that he thinks is funny. No matter what my mental state when I hear him laugh, for a moment, I’m happy.

When Garnet and I compared notes in the morning, she, too, thought that the initial emission sounded like dueling cats. When it came to speculating about its origins, our paths diverged. To me, its source was a puzzle. (Faye was rescued from the side of the road, and I tend to attribute her gastrointestinal irregularities to the unknown rigors of her days in the wild.) Garnet found no reason to consider the matter a mystery when a mundane explanation was readily at hand – namely, the mustard-coated scrap of bread I had torn from the end of a submarine sandwich and given her the day before.

Ah, yes. I had forgotten about that. When Faye joined our household, I announced that feeding human food to a dog was a surefire recipe for creating a nuisance and issued a decree that Faye would subsist on dog food only. I made the same resolution years ago when His Dogness joined my household. Again, the boots of indulgence soon trampled those intentions underfoot. I find Faye particularly handy when it comes to disposing of unwanted pizza crusts.

A slice of individually wrapped cheese stands alone as her favorite treat. When I want to make a cheese sandwich in peace, I peel open the wrapper in super-slow motion in hopes of flying under her cheese-detecting radar. I have yet to be successful. Even when Faye is in the far end of the house, I will hear her jump off the bed in one of the kid’s rooms and hurry my way.

When she comes into the kitchen and looks up at me with those eyes, the needle on the Cute-O-Meter sweeps across the gauge, stopping only after crossing into the “Too Cute to Measure” range. I peel off a strip of cheese and drop it into her awaiting mouth. As Garnet likes to say, “She’s an angel.”

THANK YOU by Garnet Goldman

When the first Star Wars came out in May 1977, I was 23 and living in San Francisco. In those days, my friends and I smoked, and movie theaters in San Francisco allowed smoking in the back rows. So we made our way to the back of theater. That will give you an idea of how clueless I was about what I was about to see.

As soon as that Imperial cruiser crossed the top of the screen, I grasped the enormity of my mistake. Every seat was occupied, though, so moving closer to the screen wasn’t possible. Alas, after the movie was over, we had to endure a three-year wait before the next chapter arrived. How innocent we were in those days. When Darth Vader revealed in the second movie that he was Luke’s father, we were stunned. “Oh, My!” Everyone in the theater let out a collective gasp. Then we had to wait another three years to find out whether Han Solo could be revived from his carbonite nap.

Mr. Doobins has grown up in a world permeated by Star Wars. “May the Force be with you” is part of his cultural genetic code. My cultural genetic code includes Gomer yelling to Barney, “Citizen’s arrest! Citizen’s arrest!” and the habit of saying, “cash money.” (This amuses Garnet and Sparkle Girl no end.)

I take great pride in having long ago introduced Doobins and Sparkle Girl to the lighter elements of my world – Buster Keaton, Jack Benny, Jeeves & Wooster. Doobins relishes his cup of milk before bed, and, having seen Jeeves mix Bertie Wooster a bracing cocktail, Doobins once said to me, “Ready for my cocktail, Jeeves.”

But, although Doobins had played the Lego Star Wars games, built Lego starfighters and seen the prequel now called Episode I, Garnet and I had not yet let him see the original three Star Wars movies – too intense, we thought. When Sparkle Girl went off to church camp for a week, we wanted to find fun and special things to do with Doobins while she was gone. The time had come, we decided, for us to watch the movies with him. No three-year waits this time – one movie a night for three nights was the plan.

The first night, Doobins was so energized by his first visit to the source of the Star Wars universe that getting him to bed by his usual time was out of the question. With that in mind, we started earlier the second night. You may rest assured that Doobins gasped not when Darth Vader told Luke he was his father. To a youngster of today, it was yesterday’s news, and he wanted them to stop gabbing and get back to fighting.

In the third movie, Doobins was unfazed by Yoda’s death. As the Jedi master waxed eloquent about what it was like to shuffle off this mortal coil after 900 years, Doobins said, “All right, already. Won’t you just go ahead and die, you big ham.”

I’m glad that Garnet, Doobins and I now share to experience of having watched the original Star Wars movies together. It looks, though, as if I better rethink my plans to model my death-bed soliloquy on Yoda’s.

LOVE by Garnet Goldman

We were off to the beach with Garnet’s family. Before we got in the car, I said, “We’re not going anywhere until everyone has gone to the bathroom.” After Doobins’ third “But I don’t have to go!,” I let it go. What I once thought of as waffling and inconsistency, I now call flexibility.

Sparkle Girl has long loved playing in the ocean. On previous beach trips, Doobins hadn’t been fully at ease in the waves. This time, he, too, leapt in with gusto. After one wave, Doobins, who considers the Three Stooges comedy geniuses, said, “Did anyone get the license number of that truck?” After a wave that I worried might have been a bit much, he jumped up and said, “That was great!” Watching him frolic was a joy.

For supper, Garnet’s sister picked up pizzas. Doobins is particular about his cheese pizzas and this brand wasn’t on his approved list. Hoping that he wouldn’t notice, I didn’t correct his presumption that it was a kind he liked. The kids had eaten and scattered, and I was cleaning up when I saw a triangle of cheese pizza on the floor under the chair that Doobins had been sitting in. The remainder of the slice was sitting on a paper plate on the counter. He hadn’t liked the pizza but, rather than saying anything, he had made it look as if he had eaten it.

As a kid, I had some wildly inaccurate notions of what it was like to be an adult. For one, I thought adults got to do whatever they wanted, and I used to look forward to becoming an adult so that no one was telling me what to do and so that I, too, could eat all the cookies I wanted. Now that I’m an adult restricting the cookie intake of kids, I try to remember what being a kid felt like. So, sometimes, I look the other way when I know that someone has exceeded the official cookie quota or is otherwise being innocently sneaky. I’m sorry I didn’t do that this time.

I could have commended him for keeping quiet or simply tossed the pizza in the trash. Instead, I picked up the triangle, found Doobins and showed it to him. I didn’t plan to scold him. I just wanted him to know he hadn’t gotten away with anything. When he saw that his ruse had been discovered, he instantly burst into tears. I instantly felt like a heel for putting a needless blotch on his day at the ocean.

As an adult with kids in my life, I make a lot of decisions on the fly. Winging it increases the likelihood for mistakes, which can lead to second-guessing. Mostly, I try to hunker down and keep moving. Every once in a while, though, I wish that I could go back in time and make a different choice. This was one of those times. If I had it to do over, I would toss that pizza triangle directly in the trash, go tousle Doobins’ hair and tell him I was glad he had enjoyed playing in the ocean so much.

If I were reliving that day, I wouldn’t change a thing about our time in the ocean, though. I expect to savor the memory of Doobins laughing in the waves for a long time.

Raspberry Refresh by Garnet Goldman

“That dress is very beautiful,” said Sparkle Girl as she dried off her hair. “Who is it for?”

“Lily,” said Garnet. “It’s a birthday present.”

“Lily the Fairy?” asked Doobins who was holding his towel without bothering to dry off.

“Yes, Lily the Fairy,” said their mother.

“That dress is kind of big for a fairy,” said Doobins.

Sparkle Girl, who had been thinking the same thing, said, “It looks like it would fit you, Momma.”

“It will fit Lily just right when we’re done,” Garnet said.

Garnet took Doobins’s towel, dried him off and sent both of them inside to change.

Later, she asked whether they would like for the dress to be from all of them or whether they wanted to make their own presents for Lily. They both wanted to draw her a picture. Sparkle Girl got out a sheet of paper and started to cut off a tiny square like she did when she left a note for the fairies.

“No need to do that,” said Garnet. “You can draw a regular-size picture.”

“Won’t it be too big for her to carry?” asked Sparkle Girl.

“It will be just the right size when we’re done,” said Garnet.

“How old is she anyway?” asked Doobins.

“I don’t know,” said Garnet.

“I bet she is at least 19,” said Sparkle Girl.

Sparkle Girl filled her sheet of paper with flowers of all different colors. On his, Doobins drew a turtle with a caterpillar on his back. Both of them were wearing armor.

“I thought it might scare Lily if I drew them fighting,” said Doobins. “So I just drew them on their way to the Gladiator Convention.”

Once they had wrapped their presents, Sparkle Girl said, “Now what?”

“We go over to Mrs. Cocovole’s,” said Garnet.

Mrs. Cocovole lives next to Mr. Chundy’s Magic Mart. It’s hard to see her house from the street because the front yard has so many trees.

“Ah, I was expecting you,” Mrs. Cocovole said when she answered the door. “The iced tea is ready. And, of course, I have chocolate milk for Mr. Doobins.”

Doobins doesn’t like tea hot or cold.

While they were having their tea and milk and cookies, Mrs. Cocovole told them a story about the time Mr. Chundy left his Marvels out in the rain.

On one wall of Mrs. Cocovole’s living room are five doors. Sparkle Girl and Doobins had had always wondered where all those doors went. But, when they asked, Mrs. Cocovole just told them that, one day, they would see.

When they were done, she stood up and said, “Children, today is the day you will see where the first door goes.”

She walked over and opened it. Sparkle Girl and Doobins felt a little nervous so they let their mother go through it first. When they followed, they found themselves in a hall lined with pictures.

As they walked down the hall, they looked at the pictures. Every one was a fairy.

At one picture, Sparkle Girl said, “Momma, that one looks like you.”
“It does,” said Doobins, “only you don’t have wings.”

When they came to the door, they opened it and stepped onto a rock surrounded a rings of looked like tree trunks, only smooth, and leaves big enough to sit on. High above them, they could see pink petals big enough to use as blankets.

It took Sparkle Girl and Doobins a moment to realize that they were standing among giant flowers.

“Wow,” they said. “Where are we?”

“The flower garden between Mrs. Cocovole’s and Mr. Chundy’s yards,” Garnet said. “Those are those zinnias you like so much, Sparkle Girl.”

“So we’re as small as a fairy?” asked Doobins.

“For the moment,” said Garnet. “Now let’s put down our presents and get back home.”

On the way back down the hallway, Sparkle Girl and Doobins paused again in front of the picture that looked like their mother.

“Did everything go well?” asked Mrs. Cocovole.

“Just fine,” said Garnet.

Although Sparkle Girl and Doobins hardly ever take naps any more, that’s exactly what they wanted to do after their adventure. After Garnet tucked them in, she went into the living room and pushed aside the grandfather clock. She opened the door behind it and looked inside the closet.

Hanging there were the wings that she had had to take off so she could start her life as Sparkle Girl and Doobins’s mother. Poos Maloos the Cat came over to take a look into the closet.

Garnet smiled and said, “When I took those off, Poos, I had no idea just how much joy Sparkle Girl and Doobins would bring me.”

She nudged Poos out of the way, closed the door and rolled the grandfather clock back into place.