The Christmas Sweater

The wipers cut semicircles through the snow on the windshield. It's good snow, I thought as I slid forward and rested my chin on the vinyl of the front seat.

"Sit back, honey," my mother, Mary, gently commanded. She was thirty-nine years old, but her tired eyes and the streaks of gray infiltrating her otherwise coal black hair made most people think she was much older. If your age was determined by what you'd been through in life, they would have been right.

"But Mom, I can't see th...