Lights

    Every Christmas since before I can remember my grandparents used to take all three of us girls out "to see the lights". Looking back now, I would say that they were brave to put all three of us in the back of their car and drive around for hours because being little girls and being sisters in a car for more than 25 seconds meant that we would probably fight. But, this venture was with my Grammie, so fighting wasn't an option. She didn't have to ask us not to fight. She didn't have to yell at us to stop fighting. She made the Christmas lights decorating the houses magical.
    I remember her sitting in the passengers seat holding my silent Papa's hand pointing out all the lights to us. If you can imagine three little blonde girls completely captivated and all squeezing their faces into one side window of a Buick, then you would have the perfect picture in your mind. He would drive slowly from street to street and she would ooh and ahh and make sure that we did not just look at decorated houses, but that we would see them in all the detail that she did.
    "Girlsies! Look over here at the deer! Did you see the Santa on the roof? Look at all those colors! That is so much work!" Those were the kind of phrases we would here and love. She made sure we never missed a sight worth seeing when it came to those lights. All the while Papa would be singing along to the carols playing on the radio, obliging all four of us and magically knowing where all the best light displays were.
     One year I remember driving down a certain area of our little town where the displays were especially brilliant. You know, the ones with the lights on the roof and the lit up sleighs, and the poles that beamed brightly with the colorful strings of light and this was just one house. . . it was in that neighborhood. Then, in that same place I saw another house where there was a single strand of lights on the porch roof. It was nothing in comparison to the splendor we had just seen!
    I started laughing and said to my sweet Grammie "Why do they even bother? They might as well not have lights at all! They did nothing!' My Grammie just said "At least they have lights up for us to see. They didn't have to do that. It's better than the houses that have no lights, isn't it?"