Alison Albert

Snowflakes in the Desert

Quite a few years back, I was a stay-at-home mom of five kids, ages ten and under. We were on a very tight budget, trying to live in Southern California on one income, with really no money for anything beyond bills, food, and gas for our minivan. Christmas was approaching and we knew we couldn’t even afford a tree. We had a handful of ornaments from my childhood, a string of lights that had belonged to my grandma, (and were somehow still working!) and a few other random decorations we’d picked up over the years, but not much.