October gave way to November as we drew turkeys to tape up on the school windows. Mom, having felt the impending chill in the seaside air, would study the Sears and Roebuck catalogue until she found snowsuits she liked and could afford to buy for our comfort and safety in the coming season. And Doug and I would begin to think about Christmas. We both sang in the choir in our Godly church. And we argued about the likelihood of the virgin birth (having paid attention to the smallest detail in our Health and Home Class taught by the school nurse.) Doug said he didn't believe in angels. He insisted that their adult bodies were too heavy to be elevated by a pair of flimsy, feathery wings into the longest night of the year. How COULD an angel fly in the driving snow? IMPOSSIBLE! Doug himself dwelt in the darkest corner of his heart and balked at any thoughts that shed light on that precious domain, until it came to the season of Christmas.

The church would begin to smell of the sweet scent of pine. Mrs. Barber, our choir director, gradually introduced the new carols to us and helped us learn the melodies and harmonies by patient endless repetition. She lined us up in solemn order, the youngest and shortest of us in front. During rehearsals we were all dressed in snow boots, blue jeans and heavy sweaters, but she knew that at Christmas Eve we would be wearing our new choir robes and she believed that we would all look like the angels she knew us to be, so convinced was she of the magic in her thinking!

Once Doug told me he was embarrassed that anyone thought he could be an angel. He wouldn't stand for anyone thinking of him as a "goodie two shoes," Mrs. Barber least of all!! His shame ran down his rosy cheeks, in the form of large tears. I felt sorry for him, but was reluctant to even try to offer comfort with anything close to reason. He sat at the foot of his bed, dressed in flannel pajamas with fire trucks all over and just looked so sad that I ached inside. Finally, I told him to go to bed and try to fall asleep. If he should have a bad dream about anything, he could come back and we could talk again. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and slid down to the floor, hitched up his pajama pants, and scuffled across the floor to his own room. Of course he didn't switch on the light, but stumbled and bumped his way across his untidy floor and then I heard his creaking bed sheets and blankets rustling in the uneasy dark, as I hear him sigh a long day's exhale, which I imagine must look like a puff of smoke from my father's cigar in the winter night.

Mary Bok has always been interested in the magic of words as they relate and give voice to the thought that moves in each of us. As a child, she kept diaries and picture books that recorded something of her relationship to the world around her. Later, as a young adult, she wrote stories and poems that mirrored this same connectedness; and even later, in the early 1970s, she began work with Ira Progoff, whose approach to journal-keeping deepened her explorations.

Mary has led Proprioceptive Writing Workshops at Elderhostels in Maine and New Hampshire, the International Women's Writing Guild conference in Canaan, N.Y., the Center for Health and Healing in Rockland and at her home in Camden.

Mary has been published in Village Soup and has assembled a collection of her work entitled, Unfolding Dreams.

Transformations
We tell stories.
We tell stories to make sense of our lives.
We tell stories to communicate our experience of being alive.
We tell stories in our own distinct voice. Our own unique rhythm and tonality.

Transformations is a weekly story-telling column. The stories are written by community members who are my students. Our stories are about family, love, loss and good times. We hope to make you laugh and cry. Maybe we will convince you to tell your stories.
— Kathrin Seitz, editor, and Cheryl Durbas, co-editor

"Everyone, when they get quiet, when they become desperately honest with themselves, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there." — Henry Miller

Kathrin Seitz teaches Method Writing in Rockport, New York City and Florida. She can be reached at kathrin@kathrinseitz.com. Cheryl Durbas is a freelance personal assistant in the Midcoast area. She can be reached at cheryldurbas@tidewater.net.