1
These stories are non-ction, but they are dependent on my
memory, which is, like anyone’s, admittedly faulty. I’m sure I got a
few facts wrong, but my feelings about being a bookseller and a
barista, about running a local shop, and about the retail Christmas
season, are all true.
.
.
.
.
chapter one
The Localist
Christmas Stories
by Carrie Rollwagen, ©2020
chapter one
Holiday Cheer
3
M
y rst experience as a barista
came from the Starbucks in
Crestline Village, which was
managed by a friend of mine, a
man named Cal Morris. I once saw a company email
that referred to our store as “Cal and his motley
crew.” I saw this because Cal printed the email out and
posted it so we’d all see it. He wore it like a badge of
honor, and so did the rest of us — Cal had cultivated
a group of mists and given us a place to t in.
He was good at getting people to rally around
him, and somehow, he could always get away with
breaking rules other people couldn’t. Cal was a
hippie philosophy major who somehow landed
in management at one of the world’s biggest
corporations. We went to the same college, but we
never knew each other, probably because Cal made his
way by being unselfconsciously cool, and I have never
lived an unselfconscious second in my life. Cal was
the kind of guy who’d skip class to smoke outside the
building and get away with it because he’d debate with
the professors after class let out. I was the kind of
person whose notes people like Cal wanted to borrow
on the night before the test.
As you might expect, Cal was not big on enforcing
corporate structure like making his employees go
to trainings or events. But there’s only so long
Starbucks is willing to overlook missing paperwork
and incomplete evaluations, and they required his
attendance, and the attendance of his assistant
manager, at the Fourth Quarter Meetup. Cal had
never gotten around to actually promoting me, but he
brought me along anyway.
I had only a vague idea of the purpose of this
event. I was picturing a conference room, maybe
a PowerPoint, and the unknowns were making me
anxious. I’d never been to the hotel where we were
meeting. Things that seem inconsequential to anyone
else, like “will I be able to nd the entrance,” loom
very large in my head, partly because I legitimately
cannot nd the entrance sometimes. When we arrived,
we passed several places I thought were the entrance,
and I saw other people ling in, but Cal walked right
by. Finally, I realized he wasn’t trying to go inside; he
was looking for a place to smoke before being trapped
inside all day. There was no way I was going in alone,
so we stood in a sort of stalemate, Cal trying to drag
out his cigarette as long as possible to postpone the
inevitable, and me wanting to start the inevitable right
away.
When we nally walked into the room, it was
buzzing — that’s the only way I can describe it. It was
already packed, and everyone seemed overly excited.
Everything smelled strongly of coee, but there was
one overwhelming thing that hit you in the face as
soon as you walked in — Christmas. It wasn’t even
Halloween yet, but these people had put up Christmas
trees and stacked the tables with boxes wrapped
4
to make small talk. Luckily, we were pretty late, so
that wasn’t much of an issue. The presentation began
almost immediately.
I’d thought the meeting would be led by our
district manager, David. Dave came by our store every
so often to test our cappuccinos and ask us to recite
the mission statement. I liked him. But Dave wasn’t
the person leading the presentation.
The man at the front of the room was condent,
engaging and no-nonsense. If he were a drink, he’d be
a Red Eye, a black coee with a shot of espresso — no
fuss, but enough extra power to get the job done. He
was some kind of big deal at the company, but I can’t
remember his name. Let’s call him Mr. Starbuck.
I should probably say here that my experience of
Starbucks as a company before that day was fairly
friendly and laid back. Not Cal-laid-back, exactly, but
not super corporate, either. I’d read Howard Schultz’s
biography, and he wrote about the romanticism of the
Italian barista, and the charm of that rst little Pike’s
Place shop. When mistakes were made, the corporate
sentiment I’d been taught was “it’s just coee,”
meaning that it was people who really mattered, and
making perfect drinks was secondary to caring for
people.
If “it’s just coee” was ever the mantra at
Starbucks, it was certainly not the sentiment of this
meeting. We watched a slide show about our prots,
and Mr. Starbuck got animated about our chance to
up like presents and piled up bags of Christmas
Blend coee. Christmas carols were playing over the
loudspeakers, and in my memory, they were turned up
too far and sounded kind of extreme and manic. This
is probably inaccurate; I think they were just playing
the CDs that Starbucks would be selling that year,
but I was really freaked out. There was an incredibly
strong energy, and it was all about … Starbucks. In
one second, I realized that this was exactly what Cal
had been protecting his motley crew from. To me, it
all seemed weird and shocking.
I looked at Cal, and all of this must have been
written on my face, because he took charge. “This is
what we do,” he said. “We nd Sri, and we don’t leave
Sri.”
I’d met Sri at the one Starbucks training I’d
actually been to. He exuded expertise and kindness.
He’d served us apples and honey to bring out the
avors in coee. He’d shown us a video about farmers.
Finding Sri seemed like a great idea.
Sri understood our distress immediately.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ve found us a table that’s the
closest to being the back without actually being in the
back,” he said. “Follow me.” We followed.
Our little round table had seats for eight. I don’t
remember exactly who else was there, but I do know
that I was intimidated by all of them. We’d been
handed little tasting cups lled with Christmas Blend
on the way in, and I clutched mine so I wouldn’t have
5
came from, and each team was given a card that had
a problem written on it, plus a Root Cause worksheet
with eight blanks — we were expected to complete an
eight-step analysis of the problem we’d drawn. Our
problem was: “A customer returns a mocha that was
made incorrectly.”
Cal and I both thought this was pretty stupid. We
were very philosophical and spiritual and well read,
and this mocha thing was beneath us. But everyone
else was putting their heads together and scribbling
on their worksheets, so we gured we should, too.
First, we surmised that the drink was returned
because it was made wrong. This was, we wrote,
because the ocial trainings had been skipped (the
irony of calling out our imaginary barista out for
skipping trainings when we skipped trainings all
the time was lost on us). We said the trainings were
skipped because the supervisor was lazy, and we
decided that was our root cause. We were nished —
but we still had ve steps to go. In hindsight, a little
self-reection might have been a good idea (and was
probably the point of the exercise.)
Instead of self-reection, Cal and I decided to go
with sarcasm. The barista was lazy, we wrote, because
of original sin. We attributed this, through four more
steps, to the fall of man. Yes, as in the Garden of
Eden. That was our root cause — the spiritual break
between God and mankind. What did we care? We
were a couple of kids who’d gone to too many church
make more of them. There were lots of charts and
statistics, but no smiling farmers, happy customers, or
even cups piled high with whipped cream.
Now that I’ve owned a business, there’s a good
chance I’d hear this presentation very dierently.
Prots are important because prots keep you in
business. I might not buy into the entire sales pitch,
but I’d at least understand it. At the time, I felt like the
curtain had been pulled back, and my nice, friendly
Starbucks had been revealed to be money-hungry and
hypocritical.
We broke for mingling and networking, and
I was having none of either. I was shy and bad at
rst impressions, and I was torn between feeling
inadequate (because I thought all other baristas were
cooler than me) and judgemental (because I thought
it was lame to be so open about your love for a
corporation).
Next on the agenda was something called a Root
Cause Analysis. Essentially, a Root Cause Analysis is a
way to problem solve that encourages you dig deeply
into issues and get to the real root of the problem.
The idea is to pull the weeds up by their roots instead
of just mowing over the top of them.
A man came to our table to lead us in the Root
Cause Analysis. If I had to choose a drink to represent
this man, it would be a tall latte — serviceable,
inoensive, and largely forgettable.
We divided into teams based on the stores we
6
I realize that most of them knew Cal well enough to
be unphased by what happened. It’s possible they still
think I’m an idiot, but nobody’s impression is based
on that day or that exercise.
At least I didn’t have to sit in my humiliation
for long. Our fearless leader came back to the stage,
announcing that we were going to get pumped up
for the Christmas season. I’m not sure if he actually
said the words “pumped up,” but that was the general
feeling.
He drew an imaginary line down the middle of
the room, announcing that the right side would be
competing against the left to see who could cheer the
loudest for his announcements. To instruct us in the
proper cheers, he’d enlisted two store managers to
stand on either side of him and hold up posterboards,
Vanna White-style, with cheer prompts. Vanna #1 was
on the right side of the room, and Vanna #2 was on
the left.
At rst, we couldn’t see what was written on the
posters, but when Mr. Starbuck gestured to Vanna
#1, she ipped her posterboard: “Sell more coee!” it
read. And when he nodded at Vanna #2, she revealed
her message: “Make more money!”
This was the chant that the room repeated, over
and over: “Sell more coee! Make more money!” We
circulated the call and response chant a few more
times, and I began to seriously wonder if I’d joined a
cult. At least we were on the “sell more coee” side of
services and studied theology in college. We were
very caeinated and we were full of an inated sense
of our own cleverness. Anyway, it’s not like we were
turning the worksheet in or anything. It was just for
us.
The worksheet, as it turned out, was not just for
us. After we’d traced our mocha all the way back to
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Cal went
to take a smoke break. While he was gone, I learned
that we were expected to present our worksheet to the
entire table. I see now that it could have been worse
— I could have been forced to present to the whole
room, or our district manager, or to Mr. Starbuck
himself. As it stood, I was only abandoned in front of
a few other Starbucks managers.
This was cold comfort to me at the time. I was
used to excelling at presentations, and I was going to
fail this one. I kept looking anxiously back at the door
Cal had left through, but to no avail.
I mumbled my way through the end of the
presentation, and I ended up saying we didn’t nish.
Everyone knew we’d stopped working early, so this
didn’t make me look great, but I just couldn’t tell that
earnest Starbucks trainer that we’d Root Caused our
way back to the Garden of Eden. Cal sauntered back
in from a side door just as we moved on to the root
cause of a team who had actually done the assignment.
I felt humiliated and stupid, like everyone at that
table thought I was the biggest idiot. Looking back,
7
high. And then, like a volcano blowing its top, Cal
ew out of his seat.
“Wow!!!” he roared. This threw everyone o. Even
the clapping baristas missed a beat. To his credit,
although Mr. Starbuck faltered, he continued on,
sharing the next holiday pastry.
“Uh … Gingerbread Loaf!” he said, ipping the
slide.
“Woooo!” Cal cried, drumming his hands on the
table, and this time, we were all getting into it. “More
coee” and “more money” were coming together, and
the room practically thundered with excitement.
More pastries were called, and the poster board
ladies swapped their signs once again. “Ahhhhh,” one
read. “Ooooooo,” read the other. Cal threw back his
head and howled like a wolf at an imaginary moon:
“Ah-ooooo!” Half the room was still cheering, and half
were laughing, but no one was sitting silently.
We were going through the “greatest hits” pastries:
Gingerbread Loaf. Cranberry Bliss Bars. The yearly
lineup. Cal decided to get ahead of the game. He
raised his sts and cried, “Andes Mint Brownies!”
Unappable Mr. Starbuck looked a tiny bit
embarrassed. “Actually, we’re not carrying those this
year,” he said. A hush fell over the room. Cal stood
frozen with his sts still raised in the air.
“What!” he cried. “What are my employees going
to steal now?”
Mr. Starbuck carried on, but he never really got
the room.
The “make more money” side was blowing us out
of the water. Some of them were standing up and
clapping their hands together above their heads. These
are the people, I think, who like to start The Wave at
sports events.
We transitioned to showcasing product, and Mr.
Starbuck referred to various gift items and pastries
that were detailed in the slideshow. The posterboard
ladies switched their messaging to “Yay” and “Wow!”
We didn’t do any better on “wow” than we’d done
on “sell more coee.” Our side of the room was falling
short, and our halearted cheering was starting to
spread. One of the clapping baristas had already sat
back down. Things were looking grim.
District Manager Dave didn’t need Starbucks
corporate thinking that half of his district didn’t have
the spirit necessary to move holiday product. He
needed cheering from both sides of the room, and he
knew just where to go.
Cal could be as existential as the next philosophy
major, but he could also be goofy and loud. In high
school, he was voted Most School Spirit. Dave made
his way up the side of our row and bent low to ask
Cal to be louder — to give “make more money” a run
for their … well, money, I guess.
Cal nodded sagely. He knew what to do. A
moment went by. Two. The Cranberry Bliss Bar was
presented, and the Vannas dutifully held their posters
8
better than I’ve had anywhere else, including other
huge corporations. I had fun there. I learned a lot
about business (I eventually did take some trainings),
and I learned a lot about life from the people I met,
especially the people I worked with.
Still, that chant has always bothered me: “Sell
more coee. Make more money.” That was the only
time I heard it put so blatantly, but I never forgot it.
I realized that, for all its social justice initiatives and
lipservice about quality and community, Starbucks, at
its core, is just a corporation.
I don’t think that’s entirely a bad thing. If more
corporations ran like Starbucks, we’d have a better
country and a better world. Still, it’s lacking. There
are things you can give a neighborhood when you live
in the neighborhood that just can’t be passed down
from a corporate level.
Eventually, Cal and I were able to experience
those things for ourselves when we opened our shop.
We tried to use the best of what we’d learned at
Starbucks, but we ran Church Street dierently. We
wanted to make money, but our main goals were to
support people and to build community. Our chant
would probably be something like, “Sell some coee.
Make a little money.” It doesn’t work as well as a
cheer, but it’s easier to live with.
his stride back. Cal had, in fact, broken him without
even trying — actually, by trying to give him what he
wanted. That’s kind of the thing about Cal, and why
you could forgive him for never trying to follow the
rules. Because when he did try, he somehow got it
more wrong than when he went his own way.
On the way home, we sat in Cal’s Subaru that
smelled like cigarettes, like the outdoors and like sour
milk on fabric. I asked him if his wolf-yell, ““Ah-oooo”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. To this
day, I don’t know if he was trolling the system and
purposely being silly, or if he saw those “Ahhh” and
“Ooo” signs together and genuinely misunderstood
the assignment. With Cal, it could really go either way.
It would be a few months before I left Starbucks,
and still longer before Cal left, too. Eventually, the
Starbucks sign came down from that Crestline store,
and we hung up our own shingle in its place, for
Church Street Coee & Books, founded by Cal Morris
and Carrie Rollwagen.
That Starbucks rally wouldn’t be the last time I
was too earnest for my own good, and it wouldn’t
be the last time Cal skipped out before getting to the
root of the problem. But it also wouldn’t be the last
time he saved the day with humor and good cheer.
People often ask me if I hate Starbucks, but I
don’t. Starbucks was one of my favorite places to
work. My health insurance and other benets were
chapter two
Decking the Halls
10
M
y sister and I headed to Church
Street Coee & Books, the shop
I’d opened a few months before
with our friend Cal. It was chilly,
enough that we could see our breath, but not too cold.
Thanksgiving in Alabama was never terribly cold. We
were meeting my parents, who were driving up from
Florida to help us decorate the shop for Christmas.
There were a few customers in line, but Cal
stopped everything to greet us. Well, one of us.
“Courtenay!” he yelled. “The prodigal son returns!”
Cal did a little dance, and then Courtenay did a
little dance. She was always a lot better at that kind
of thing — being fun — than I was. A couple of
customers recognized Courtenay, and she and Cal
kept up the banter for a few minutes while I went
straight for the espresso machine where Sri was
working the bar.
One of the great things about being a regular at
a coee shop is that you often don’t have to actually
articulate your order — your barista just knows.
“Here, take this,” Sri said, handing me a mug. “It’ll
warm you up and it’ll wake you up.”
I nodded my thanks.
Cal was in good spirits. He was getting o work
soon, we were making money, the customers were
acting thankful, and he’d be having Thanksgiving
dinner later.
“Where are the tags?” I asked him. “We came early
so I can grab the stamp and get started.”
Cal had volunteered to make the round clay tags
that we were planning on tying onto gifts when
customers ordered gift wrap. I was rather proud of
our gift wrap, and it had taken a lot of false starts
and frustrations to come up with it — the trick was
nding something that didn’t eat into our costs or
take a lot of time. After hours of Pinterest research,
I’d settled on a “brown paper packages tied up with
string” concept, and I’d found a recipe for making salt
dough tags. Stamped with our logo, I thought they’d
complement the gift wrapping perfectly, and they’d
add a little branding for us, too. Plus, they were cheap
— just pennies a tag.
“I’m having the kids do it,” he said. “They’ll be
ready later.” Cal had three kids under six. I loved Cal’s
kids — I used to babysit them every week. But this
was throwing o my plan, and I do not like it when
things throw o my plans. A change in plans in what
Cal lives for, though, so, for the most part, I’d learned
to roll with the punches on things like this.
My mom’s side of the family ran a construction
company, so when there’s a family project to do, it
runs like a mini job site. Installing Christmas decor
at the shop was no big deal, because we’re used to
strategizing and pulling together like this — we do it
every time someone moves into a new apartment or
wants to renovate, so we understand how each other
work.
11
Courtenay is gregarious when she meets someone
like Cal, but gets quiet and focused when there’s
work to be done. Mom nds her inner stage director,
creating a game plan and making sure everyone is
executing on it to make a cohesive whole. In everyday
life, Dad communicates like a prophet, or like a
parable — his meaning is usually hidden unless you
know how to read him. But in situations like this, he’s
direct and practical because he knows the rest of us
need him to be.
My parents arrived right on time, which is to
say they were about an hour earlier than they said
they’d be. Instead of a Thanksgiving dinner, Mom had
packed a sort of tapas meal that we’d eat throughout
the day. They also brought decorations — a long
garland, a tube full of sparkly ornaments that Dad
had found, and a dozen or so small wreaths that
Mom made by wrapping greenery around embroidery
hoops.
I’d been crafting, too, giving my pile of publisher
review paperbacks a second life as Christmas decor.
I’d followed a tutorial to turn books into Christmas
trees by folding back their pages approximately one
million times. I stamped holiday messages like “Merry
Merry” onto the edges of old hardcovers and stacked
them to use as risers. I cut out paper birds from
book pages and strung them onto ornament hooks; it
was tricky to transport them without smashing their
wings, so I had them all nestled at the bottom of a
box, like baby chicks.
I was eager for Cal to leave so we could get to
work — and so he’d bring back the gift tags. Dad
kept trying to engage him in conversation, because,
when there are other people around, Dad is always so
interested in making sure they’re doing well that it’s
hard for him to focus on anything else.
Eventually, Cal headed home, and we spread out
all our supplies — our greenery and our tiny birds and
our forest of paper trees — onto a couple of tables.
Then we gathered around the front counter to make
a plan. We looked like we were architecting some
huge project — we took it very seriously. Mom made
suggestions, and Courtenay made a list. We’re big on
lists.
It was decided that Mom and Courtenay would
be on wreath duty, adding ribbons and hanging them
from the windows. Dad’s job was to get the tree
(which Cal had stored in our employee bathroom,
next to the toilet), and to help me carry our huge
Christmas book order downstairs. I, of course, was
on book duty — switching out the display books for
Christmas ones.
I’m a good book buyer. I’ve basically been training
for it all my life, so I should be. I have an instinct
for what people are going to like, and it helped that
I’d learned from some rookie mistakes at the rst
bookstore I’d managed, like any pop up book that you
allow customers to open will be destroyed, or placing
12
a coee table book on a high shelf with a sign reading
“ask for assistance” is practically begging someone
to try to pull it down by themselves, resulting in a
dented cover for the book and a minor injury for the
customer.
I knew our customers favored children’s books
that felt classic over contemporary, so I chose titles
like Mr. Willoughby’s Christmas Tree and The Jolly
Christmas Postman. I ordered a dozen of David
Sedaris’s Holidays on Ice, and I made sure we were
stocked with Tolkein’s Letters from Father Christmas,
a favorite that tends to sell out early.
Twice while we were getting settled into our
work, people knocked on the door, directly on the
closed sign. The rst time, I opened it a crack to
tell them I was sorry, but that we were closed. As
expected, they asked to be let in anyway, just for “one
quick cup of coee.” The second time, I shook my
head and mouthed “Sorry” without opening the door.
“What do these people expect?” Dad said. He was
getting exasperated, which was never good because it
meant he’d try to help and make things worse. Dad
comes o like he’s mad at people, but it’s just because
he wants to help them and doesn’t know how to do it.
Courtenay and I were telling him it wasn’t a big deal,
but he was unconvinced.
I ran upstairs to grab a few more book trees, and
as I came down, there was another knock at the door.
Dad was facing me.
“What’s wrong with these people!” he said.
“Chill, Dad,” Courtenay said. “It’s just Sri and
Daniel with the menu boards.”
We let them in and checked out the menus that
Sri’s partner Daniel had drawn in chalkboard marker.
Alongside the drink oerings, like Peppermint Hot
Chocolate and Gingerbread Latte, he’d added bows,
stacks of books, and hot chocolates with sprinkles on
top.
The decision to have sprinkles was a contentious
one, actually. Cal and I went round and round about
it — he wanted marshmallows, and I argued that
marshmallows were pretty much limited to hot
chocolate, but sprinkles were festive and exible
because they could be used on many drinks. We both
won, because we decided to carry both. Sprinkles
ended up being the catalyst behind our creating one
of our most popular holiday drinks, The Grinch —
one of our baristas blended green sprinkles into a
Peppermint Frost one day, and the pale green drink
tasted minty and appropriately Christmasy, so we
put it on the menu. We lled those Grinches up with
sprinkles; it was pretty disgusting, really. But they
were tasty, and a great seller.
“These menus are wonderful!” Dad was saying.
“You did this? By hand?” As grumpy as he’d been
a few minutes before, he was now putting the
same amount of energy into marveling at Daniel’s
handiwork and making sure he knew how great a job
13
he’d done.
Daniel and Sri didn’t stay long, and once they left,
Dad carried boxes of books down from upstairs, and
I started unloading them onto the table, stacks of red
and green glossy covers with illustrations of reindeer
and snowakes and Christmas trees. Every time he
came down with a new box, he’d go through the
books I was unpacking and take one or two of them
over to the cash register. Finally, I asked him what he
was doing.
“This is my stack,” he said. “I’m buying them and
taking them home.”
I told him he was being silly, but really, it made
me feel good — the real trick to building holiday
stock is to tempt people who aren’t planning on
giving books as gifts into buying them, because most
people aren’t. Novels don’t generally make great gifts
because they’re hard to choose for someone else, but
books about hobbies or a certain subject that you
know a person is interested in are perfect. To nd
these books, I spied and I shopped: I went to Barnes
and Noble and Books a Million, and I’d bring a little
notepad to write down which editions of which
books we should get in our store. It was very low-tech
corporate espionage.
Things were starting to come together. Cal had
dropped o the bag of gift tags, as promised. The tree
was up, and Courtenay was supplementing classic red
Christmas balls with my handmade paper birds. Dad
turned the children’s section into a magical fairyland
by hanging dozens of tiny, glittery ornaments from
the ceiling so they sparkled when you came around
the corner. The interruptions had slowed, too — we
were now solidly into the afternoon, so more people
were at home and eating with their families. It was
time for me to wrap some books so we could use
them as decor around the shop.
I opened the sack of tags Cal had left on the
counter, and that’s when I realized they were all
wrong. I’d asked for round tags so we could stamp the
round logo onto them. But Cal had let his kids use
whichever cookie cutters they wanted — so instead
of perfect round circles, I found a bag full of hearts,
diamonds, stars and clovers. It was like a bag of
oversized Lucky Charms. It would have been quirky
and cute for family gifts, but it made no sense in a
retail setting.
Immediately, my anger, worries and anxieties
about the Christmas season ooded over me. What if
this gift tag asco was just the beginning? What if all
my careful planning came to nothing, and the whole
shop looked homemade and silly? Tears were welling
up in my eyes and I didn’t want my family to see. I’d
dragged them all to Birmingham, and I couldn’t even
take care of the smallest thing. So I grabbed the bag of
ornaments and went into the kitchen, letting the door
swing shut behind me.
Mom realized I was freaking out. She came into
14
the kitchen and I told her what was wrong, but when
looked in the bag for herself, her face changed from
Concerned Mom to her thinking face. She dumped
the tags out on the counter and started separating
them by shape.
“Actually,” she said. “These star shapes could still
work. They’re Christmas-y. And it looks like they
made a lot of those.”
She was right; we tried a star on one of the
packages, and it looked perfect — a sweet little clay
star tied onto the package with a piece of red twine.
They didn’t just look ne — they looked better than
the circles would have, and they didn’t require the
extra work of stamping to look great.
Little by little, the shop looked less like a mess
and more like a winter wonderland. We hung the big
garland of greenery over the counter together, because
two of us had to hold it while the other two debated
over whether it was lined up correctly or not. The
sun was setting as we lit the garland and the tree,
and the lights sparkled o the windowpanes, making
everything look even more magical. My fear of the
decor looking too homespun seemed silly now — the
shop looked perfect.
Eventually, there was only one last star to tie onto
one last gift. Courtenay had made us all hot chocolates
for the way home, and we loaded them into a to go
tray. We made one nal wipe of the counters, one
nal sweep of the oors, and took out the trash before
I switched o the lights (leaving the Christmas lights
on, of course) and locked up.
Before we headed home, Dad lined us up in the
parking lot to admire our handiwork. The Christmas
lights sparkled through the windows, and you could
just see the outlines of the wreaths with their bows
and catch glimpses of the books inside. The windows
reected the village clock across the street, decked
out in lights, with the moon hanging over it all. The
moon would still be visible when the baristas arrived
the next morning, when the scones went into the
oven and the espresso machine sputtered to life,
and Church Street Coee & Books entered into the
Christmas season, ushered by a few invisible elves on
Thanksgiving night.
If you asked almost any Church Street customer
who owned the shop, they would say Cal. They didn’t
purposely forget about me, but Cal was always jolly
and goofy and fun. I was always quieter and did a lot
of my work behind the scenes. Cal was happy to bend
the rules for any customer, and I was always visibly
frustrated by it. Everyone remembers Cal, and smiles
when they think of him. When I see former customers
now, they remember my face, but usually can’t place
me.
But that’s okay, because part of the shop they love
is because of me, too. Because of the books I ordered,
the sta I hired, the tiny birds I cut out of book pages,
and the magic I fought for every step of the way, from
15
sprinkles to clay stars.
And it’s because of my family, too, who put up
with my stressing, my requests for help, and my
asking them to give up their Thanksgivings for a
bunch of people they’d never meet. I don’t know
many shop owners whose families don’t do exactly
the same thing — setting up chairs at book signings,
wrapping gifts and dropping o meals, not to mention
supporting us when we’ve reached our lowest
emotional points.
In every shop, there is the Santa Claus, the
jolly face that everyone knows. But there is also a
workshop where magic is made behind the scenes.
Maybe they’ll never know we were there, but it
wouldn’t have been the same without us.
chapter three
Christmas
on Church Street
17
T
o kill your Christmas spirit, you don’t
need a Grinch. You need a retail job.
The rst year I ran Church Street
Coee & Books, the criticism and
critiques were neverending. Most people don’t think
to mention the things you do right, but there’s no
end to the suggestions about what you should be
doing dierently. There are customers who return
their cappuccinos and who try to bring books back
after they’ve read them, and no sta member is ever
happy about their schedule. And then there are the
idea people — the people who try to convince you
to sell gazpacho, to turn your pastry case into a toast
bar, to oer keto breakfast boxes, to sell pencils. A few
ideas you use (we made keto-friendly trail mix), some
solve themselves (the pencil guy started hiding pencils
above the door jambs so he’d always have one when
he needed it), but mostly, you have to nd a way to
engage politely with the customer while ignoring their
idea. I know now that I take input as criticism, even
when it isn’t meant that way, but I wasn’t self-aware
about that when I ran the shop. If you want to learn
about the worst parts of yourself, run a business —
your sta and your customers will teach you about
your shortcomings like no one else can.
Criticism haunts me. (I still get angry about the
writer who spent endless afternoons in our cafe,
nursing nothing but a three-dollar black coee, and
then had the nerve to complain on Twitter about
our Christmas music.) I was exhausted for two
months straight, working constantly. I was drinking
an inadvisable number of espresso shots. There
weren’t many times to rest, and when I did nd a few
moments, it felt impossible to shut down enough to
actually relax. After reading The Power of Habit, I
had this idea that I could hack my brain into relaxing
more quickly by training it with sensory experiences
that I only had during break times. So during my
10-minute breaks, I’d bring a tiny apple cider up to
our upstairs dormer and sit in a patch of sunlight, like
a cat. I’d listen to Sun Kil Moon’s Carry Me Ohio and
try to read. It sort of worked, but there’s only so much
bio-hacking you can do in 10 minutes. I got one day
o a week, but I was too exhausted to do anything
but lay on the couch watching Harry Potter movies on
repeat.
I’ve always been enchanted by Christmas, and I
was worried that running a store over the holidays
would take away that feeling. It’s easy to become a
cynic if you work retail during the holiday season,
because you honestly do see some terrible behavior;
you risk becoming jaded.
But that never happened. Even on the hard days,
it all felt worth it. We were building something —
something of value to our sta, our community and
ourselves. Every morning, I knew I could make a
dierence in someone’s day — a tiny dierence, but
enough to feel valuable. Bookstores and coee shops
18
season had to be endured, with teenagers crowded
around every table with textbooks and highlighters
and worried looks on their faces. We had a couple of
tutors who worked primarily from Church Street, and
they each had a new ivy league hopeful at their table
every hour.
I’ve been trying to tell a story that shows what
running a bookstore and coee shop at Christmastime
is like, but I can’t think of a narrative that ts. I
think that’s because running a store, especially at
the holidays, doesn’t feel like the kind of story that
has a beginning, middle and end. It’s just the middle
that’s made up of anecdotes that run through my
mind like a montage in a movie. Like that beautiful,
crisp Saturday before Christmas, when I was at the
wrapping table and my friend Alex’s daughter told
me all about baking cookies for Santa. Or when I was
sitting at my desk upstairs, watching customers walk
through snow urries with hot drinks and armloads
of books. Or closing the shop with the night baker
and sitting outside on the curb after locking up,
shivering and eating day-old muns and looking out
at the Christmas lights.
Those were the days when the hot chocolate line
would stretch out the door with kids who were so full
of energy and hormones that it was impossible for
them to stay in a line or resist shouting their orders
at random times. There are a thousand variations on
a hot chocolate — with whipped cream, light whip, no
make a good match for many reasons, but the fact that
people come back daily for their coees means you’re
a part of their lives in a way you might not be if you
were solely a bookshop. Our customers told us things
they wouldn’t tell their families, or even their friends,
about which parts of the season were most dicult
for them, why their inlaws were driving them crazy,
and which parties they were dreading. People would
compliment the sparkly ornaments in the children’s
section, get excited when they spotted the Rudolph
diorama above our door, and ask us how we made
those wreaths in the windows. And then there was my
favorite, when customers came back after Christmas
to tell me how much the books I’d helped them
choose had delighted their family members, and how
they’d been able to forge stronger connections with
people they loved because of it.
At Church Street Coee & Books, the Christmas
season started with the run-up holidays. In her book
Wintering, Katherine May writes, “Halloween is
the border crossing into winter.” For us, that was
Homecoming, with the parade oats that rolled down
our street and the girls in glittery green dance team
uniforms shivering until they got their hot chocolates.
Next came Halloween, when the costume parade came
through, and we’d pass out strong coees to parents
exhausted before the Trick or Treating even began.
Thanksgiving was when we decorated the shop for
the holidays, but before Christmas could come, exam
19
the oors, making baking mixes and cleaning the
espresso machine, maybe writing a nice note to
brighten someone’s morning. The morning crew just
tries to survive getting slammed with orders, and
the afternoon is the leanest of all, usually one barista
setting things up for the night crew, hoping you don’t
have a huge rush when you’re all by yourself.
At the holidays, the business of running a
bookstore and the business of running a coee shop
are actually quite dierent. For a coee shop, you
might develop a new drink (ours was called The
Grinch) and maybe a couple new pastries, but you’re
mostly pulling out old favorites: Peppermint Mocha,
Gingerbread Latte and Eggnog Latte are always going
to be bestsellers. You can count on nostalgia, plus the
perceived scarcity of seasonal oerings, to boost sales.
With books, though, people don’t buy their
traditional favorites every year. You’re not going to
buy a new copy of The Night Before Christmas; you’ll
just pull the copy you have down from the bookshelf.
It makes things a bit tricky for a bookseller, because
you still need to capture that sentimentality — you
have to nd new titles that already feel like memories.
Most of the time, a customer would ask for one
or two recommendations, but a few would bring
their entire Christmas list and asked us to pick out a
book for everyone on it. That was so fun for me —
I’d ask them to list ages and a couple of interests for
everyone on the list, and then I’d choose the books
whip, extra hot, breve, with sprinkles, no sprinkles,
add caramel avor, add caramel drizzle, with
peppermint, with vanilla, with hazelnut — and you’d
hear them all coming at you at once.
Invariably, I’d be trying to keep all those orders
straight, and that’s when a customer would ask about
a book, so I’d be steaming milk and relling whipped
creams while telling them that Neil Gaiman’s The
Ocean at the End of the Lane is a modern classic
and they absolutely must get a copy, and sure, it’s a
hardcover, but what a beautiful hardcover, and trust
me, they’ll want to own it forever, and by the way,
don’t hardcovers make the best gifts, and do they
know we oer free wrapping?
Eectively working a rush is actually really
fun. It’s cold outside and everyone is bundled up,
and you’re in this shop full of twinkle lights and
Christmas music is playing and people are happy and
the bags are lling up with books, the wrapping table
is stacked high, and as a business owner, you know
the totals are edging you closer to being in the black.
You’re multitasking and getting drinks out quickly,
and your teamwork with the other barista is like a
choreographed dance.
I love how bonded you get with the sta over the
Christmas season. You pull together through huge
rushes, and you have sweet and funny moments in the
downtime. The closing sta takes time to make things
right for the morning, cleaning the mats and sweeping
20
and wrap, even when I wasn’t scheduled. I love that
people are gifting books, but I also love the eciency
of wrapping books — they’re uniformly shaped, and
they’re already rectangular, so you don’t need boxes.
Our wrapping table was set up with everything close
at hand: tape and scissors, brown kraft paper, the clay
stars that we tied onto each gift, and a choice of red,
green or blue yard to tie them on with. I could knock
through about a book a minute.
Handselling books has a special magic at any time,
but especially at Christmas. I’ve tried to recapture
the feeling by discussing books online, by reviewing
books, joining book clubs, listening to bookish
podcasts, by trying to engage in books on Instagram,
and I can’t do it. The people who talk about books
on the internet are self-selecting — they already like
books. And to be totally honest, I don’t usually like to
talk books with people who like books. It’s like we’ve
each already built our own secret book worlds, and
instead of inviting each other in, we tend to issue a
series of tests so the other person proves they deserve
entry. It’s exhausting and snobbish. But when you can
connect a person who doesn’t think they like books
with a book they love — well, that’s something truly
magical.
At their core, coee and books are about
connection — when we meet for coee, we connect
with each other, and when we read books, we connect
with the wider world. When you work at a coee
and wrap them up. One weekend, the requests had
gotten a little out of control, so I asked Cal to help
me out. He dutifully lled out the list and stacked the
books up for me to wrap.
Every book in the stack was by the same author.
“These are all Wendell Berry books,” I said to Cal. He
shrugged, “So what?” he said. “Wendell Berry is the
best gift for anyone.”
Cal is obsessed with Wendell Berry, a relatively
obscure farmer/poet who writes agrarian essays and
novels about a small town and farms. Clearly, he’s
not everyone’s cup of tea. Cal doesn’t always see that,
because he’s unabashed about his passions. That’s the
kind of bookseller he is — when he loves a book, he’ll
sell 30 copies, because he’ll tell absolutely everyone
about it. And he chooses his books well; he’ll read a
long and complex essay and suck the marrow from
its bones; he can read literally ction and speak about
it with clarity and without pretense. He reads deeply,
and he sells with condence.
For me, it’s dierent. I have my favorites, but
I only share them with the select few I know are
kindred spirits. Otherwise, I’m more of a book
matchmaker, searching for the right book to meet my
customers at the moment they’re in. I redid Cal’s gift
list, although I did leave two Wendell Berry titles on it
— for the people they were actually suited to.
Free gift wrap makes gifting books that much
more tempting, and I liked to come in on Saturdays
21
a bad day that turned around, or you might’ve just
experienced a few minutes of lightness. Being able
to provide that to people was a privilege, and it’s
something I miss now that I’ve moved on from the
shop, especially around the holidays.
There are so many shop owners missing that this
year. We hear about their nancial struggles, and
we should — those are major. But in addition to the
worry over whether or not they’ll be able to stay open
or pay their stas, there’s the loss of something that’s
harder to explain, but in some ways, more painful.
The loss of the community they built, the connections
they made every day, the love and care and expertise
they were able to put into running their shops. The
loss of, in many cases, everything they loved about
their businesses. The loss of that can break your heart.
I don’t know what to do to help to mend that, but
my guess is it’s something like those customers who
came back to tell me they loved the books I helped
them choose. They weren’t eloquent about it. We
didn’t have a long conversation. But their short thank
yous reverberate all the way through to today — and
maybe a text of gratitude or a social media post about
what we remember and miss about our favorite small
shops will do the same in 2020.
Because, when I think about my time at the shop,
I don’t look back as a Grinch. There were good
times, laughter and simple words of gratitude that
made me feel like my work had meaning. And even
shop, you get to watch these interactions. You see
groups of students who’ve just spent their rst year
in college meet up with their old high school friends.
You serve black coee to old men who gather in the
cafe every afternoon to read their papers and talk
over the news of the day. You see a dad come in on
Sundays with his little daughter dressed in a fuzzy
jacket and a pom-pom hat, settling her in at a chair
that’s so tall her legs swing a foot o the ground. You
get to tell an exhausted mom that you’ll wrap her
books while she takes a break with her cappuccino,
and you can tell that it’s the rst time someone’s really
noticed her in days — and you see a little spark come
back to her eyes when you hand her the bag.
The Christmas retail season can be beautiful and
terrible. It can stir up all the shameful things in us, the
competition and the materialism and the selshness.
But it can also get us to think about other people, to
take time to consider what they’d want and to make
a beautiful experience for them. I think it’s why those
of us who love Christmas work so hard to invoke
it — because it’s the one time of year we all agree
that doing things for others that would normally be
considered frivolous and silly are worth prioritizing.
You could walk into Church Street exhausted and
stressed, stumble on a few perfect gifts without even
trying, have a laugh with a barista, and walk out with
a Peppermint Mocha in one hand and a bag full of
wrapped gifts in the other. You might’ve been having
22
though there were far more criticisms than there were
kindnesses, it’s the kindnesses that I remember.
chapter four
A Long Winter’s
Night
24
A
t closing time on Christmas Eve, I ran
the totals on the cash register. We’d
done it. We weren’t millionaires — we
weren’t even making prots yet. But
our six-month-old shop had put up a strong showing
for Christmas, and the season was a success. I’d
known a few days before that we’d hit our targets, but
it still felt satisfying to see it printed out in black and
white, on that long scroll of receipt paper.
I locked the door, and Sri made celebratory spiked
coees for me, my sister, Courtenay, and our friend
Patrick. Patty had come to see Courtenay before she
left town — she’d come up for the week of Christmas
to work at Church Street so our regular sta could
have time o during the busy season. The plan was for
Courtenay and I to drive to my grandparents’ house
in Florida that night.
The four of us sat around the Christmas tree
sipping our hot drinks, practically giddy with the
knowledge that we’d made it — we were really
and truly through the Christmas retail season. Sri
and Patrick are both incredible storytellers, and we
talked and laughed about Christmases present and
Christmases past.
We were only spotted once, by a regular customer
who timidly knocked on the windowpane, asking
a little desperately if we had a copy of Wreck This
Journal in the shop. “We only have one left, and it’s
really beat up.” I said. The cover had been bent back
at some point. “I don’t care, I’ll take anything,” he said,
relieved, even more when I oered to wrap it for him.
It was the perfect end to the season. We had great
conversation, twinkle lights and good, hot drinks.
It was the kind of night that probably should’ve
ended with us tucked into bed; Courtenay and I were
exhausted from working long days on our feet. We
needed sleep. Instead, we started our all-night drive.
When the dashboard clock turned midnight and
marked the arrival of Christmas day, I was tired,
but happy. I got to hang out with my sister, and we
were listening to music and eating junk food. I talked
constantly all the way home, like I was decompressing
from two months at once. I was worn out, but I was
also wired, full of french fries and caeine and the
knowledge that I’d made it to the rst major nish
line of this grand experiment of opening a store.
We pulled into my grandparents’ long driveway
around 3:00 a.m. and I dragged myself into bed in
my aunt’s old bedroom. I used to lay under this same
roof listening for Santa, even when I was too old to
believe in him. I thought … maybe. And then I’d tell
Courtenay to listen for reindeer hooves, and that
would terrify her. Now there were visions of totals
and inventory reports dancing in my head. I couldn’t
get work out of my mind, and my subconscious brain
kept dragging me back to wrapping books, ringing up
customers, and making hot chocolates.
Normally, I’m a person who loves getting up on
25
printed out — Wonderful Counselor. Mighty God.
Prince of Peace. But all I saw was what wasn’t there
— my childhood. My candy cane train wasn’t on
this tree, and neither was my Miss Piggy ornament
with my sister’s matching Kermit, or my Baby’s
First Christmas stocking. There was no history, no
nostalgia. There wasn’t even any color, because the
ornaments were all made on a home printer, so they
were black and white. To me, it looked like a Xerox
copy of a Christmas tree.
My dad put a mug of coee in front of me, and I
weakly leaned over and sipped from it like it was an
IV. I was barely functioning. I denitely needed more
sleep, but the rest of the family was already arriving.
They came in, and we were supposed to greet
them with open arms and the cheer of the season.
I mumbled “Merry Christmas” and didn’t get up; I
wasn’t sure I could move. My back hurt, my feet hurt,
and my body seemed to have realized I was nally
letting it rest and was taking full advantage.
My extended family are conservative Christians in
pretty much every sense of the word. They are kind
and generous and giving. They are also extremely old-
school in their beliefs and not afraid to ponticate on
them. When they arrived, our rst conversation was
about an article someone had read about the dangers
of yoga and meditation, and how clearing your mind
left it open for Satan to whisper who-knows-what in
your ear. I’d heard this kind of thing before — I’d felt
Christmas morning, but that year was dierent. The
past two months had been nonstop work and worry.
In the light of day, my relief didn’t feel satisfying — it
just felt weird and empty. My advice to people who
work retail is to let yourself sleep in on Christmas
morning, but we were meeting family, so we got up
bright and early — well, early, anyway. I put on a
sweatshirt and brushed my teeth, and the image I
saw in the mirror was not great. I’d gained about 15
pounds since opening the shop. My face was pale and
puy. There were dark circles under my eyes.
My parents were temporarily living in a separate
apartment in my grandparents’ house, and that’s
where we were spending Christmas. The apartment
had its own kitchen, living room and bathroom; what
it did not have was our family Christmas decorations.
I’m a purist who thinks traditions should be observed
every single year, or they’re not traditions. I’m afraid
the holiday magic will come crumbling down forever
if we go one year without a tree. My mom, on the
other hand, is pragmatic, and there was no way she
was pulling all our Christmas stu out of the storage
unit during a transition year just so she could pack it
all up again a few days later.
In deference to me, she had hung our stockings.
They had a tabletop tree, and she’d gotten creative,
using PowerPoint to design her own ornaments since
ours were in storage. When Mom saw this tree, she
saw the names of God she’d carefully chosen and
26
been ipped, and I just kept saying what I really
thought. I wasn’t combative, and I wasn’t even making
things purposely awkward. It wasn’t that what I was
saying was so bad, it’s just that it wasn’t in character.
My usual role was to smooth things over, and I was
now the one who needed to be smoothed.
I got a text, and when I looked at my phone, I saw
that it was from Courtenay. “What are you doing?” It
read.
What I was doing, I think, was short circuiting. I’d
been eating, breathing and sleeping Church Street for
so long that, somehow, talking about anything else felt
impossible. I’d wanted my home to be a warm cocoon
that I could snuggle back into eortlessly, healing
from a dicult season, but that’s not how life works.
(That’s not even how cocoons work.)
In my family, we each give our attention to
whoever happens to be unwrapping, so all eyes were
on me when I opened my next gift — it was a picnic
basket set, clearly designed for a couple. There was
a wicker basket, two wine glasses, a corkscrew, little
plates and cheese knives. This picnic set screamed
couples date in the park; the romantic comedy started
playing in your head the minute you opened it. This
basket was designed to be packed for two lovers, full
of little cheeses and jams, cloth napkins and a bottle
of wine and, as a nishing touch, one carefully chosen
item that’s an inside joke to the couple. You’d head
o to the park with your boyfriend — he’d carry the
guilty the rst two years I practiced yoga just in case I
really was defying God with my downward dog.
The article was nonsense, but the conversation
was ultimately harmless. The tactful way to deal
with it was to change the subject. Instead, on this
Christmas morning, I chose to plunge into a scientic
explanation of meditation. I’m pretty sure I did a
short chanting demonstration. Everyone looked at
me strangely, and they should’ve — I just didn’t want
to listen to them, I wasn’t trying to get through to
them. I was irritating, not persuasive. I felt like I was
watching myself from outside myself, and apparently
Courtenay did, too, because she gave me a “please shut
up” look.
In a pretty blatant attempt to change the direction
this day was taking, Mom suggested stockings.
Our stockings were knitted by my mom’s college
roommate; they’re intricate and personalized, and
we’ve always treated them with a sort of reverence.
When we were young, we’d nd them stued with
magical little gifts and candies. That year, Santa took
a dierent tact — because that was the year Santa
tucked pamphlets about breast cancer into my and my
sister’s stockings. If you’re wondering if it’s disturbing
to think of Santa worrying about your breast health, I
am here to tell you that it is.
After the breast cancer stockings, things really
started going downhill. I had no lter. I was normally
respectful and polite, but some kind of switch had
27
snapped into their own little compartments. Dad was
making jokes, trying to diuse the tension. Mom, ever
practical, was reaching for the basket’s contents and
bringing up alternative uses for the things inside, like
making making yogurt parfaits in the wine glasses.
And my sister was just trying to get the wine glasses
out of Mom’s hands so she could shove them back in
the basket and get it out of my sight.
But like Pandora’s Box, this basket had already
been unleashed into the world. I tried to move on;
honestly, I did. I know now, and I think I even knew
then, that this gift wasn’t personal. I don’t even
think it was bought for me — I’m pretty sure it was
regifted. But the more I tried to smile and stop the
tears, the darker my vision was getting, and the part
of the world I could see got smaller and smaller. I was
breathing too shallowly and too quickly. My world
was collapsing in on itself, right there on Christmas
morning.
I don’t know how I got to the bathroom, but I did.
I turned the light o and turned the water on and lay
on the carpeted oor. I might’ve passed out; I’m not
really sure. At some point, my sister came to the door
and told me that everyone had gone, and I should take
as much time as I needed. Eventually, she got me out
of the bathroom and into bed, and I slept for the rest
of the day.
I made a beautiful Christmas for a lot of people
that year, but not for myself or my family. And I
basket, you’d carry a plaid blanket and pick the perfect
tree. He’d probably propose, because how could he
not? That was the magic of the picnic basket.
There was absolutely nothing a single woman
could do with this picnic set, except maybe weep into
it. I had even less use for it, since I was practically
chained to Church Street, and my lunches consisted
of peanut butter sandwiches and cappuccinos. I didn’t
even own a car, and the basket was too big for one
person, so there was no way to transport the thing
alone. I’d never felt my lack of a partner more in my
life.
“Now all you need is someone to share it with,”
some well-meaning family member said, underlining
what I already felt, and apparently they thought it was
a helpful and wise comment, because they repeated it
over and over. “Now all you need is someone to share
it with,” like it was that easy, as easy as picking out the
right bottle of wine.
I’m generally pretty good about faking my feelings
about gifts I don’t like, but I wasn’t good at faking
anything that morning. I was trying so hard not to
start crying, but I know my eyes were lling up with
tears.
Everyone started trying to salvage the situation
in their own ways, and everyone was talking at once.
My grandparents, who thought I didn’t like the gift
because I didn’t understand it, were showing me
the basket’s features, like the fact that the knives
28
better that I fell apart — because I was honest about
what was going on with me, and it allowed us all to
be real with each other.
Maybe the best Christmases don’t look like a
movie, all perfectly set tables and excessively trimmed
trees. The traditions and the sentimental ornaments
have their place, but I think the best Christmases are
the ones bring us together, that teach us more about
each other and strengthen the bonds that tend to
grow loose with time. Those are the Christmas I’m
learning to value most — and those are almost always
the messy ones.
can’t even say I regret it. Sure, I would’ve done
things dierently. I never would have agreed to
drive to Florida in the middle of the night. I would
have slept in on Christmas morning. But if I had to
choose, I’d still pick a good season at the shop over
a good Christmas day. That attitude makes things
dicult for my family. It’s also what makes me a good
entrepreneur.
I wasn’t sure if I should tell this story, but every
business owner I asked said I needed to. Because
a panic attack in your rst year in business is so
common that it’s basically a rite of passage, and every
business owner knows what it’s like to be profoundly
misunderstood by friends and family who think
running a business is just like any other job.
It isn’t. The stress is intense and overwhelming,
and it hits you when you least expect it. You don’t
fall apart at the store, in front of customers — you fall
apart later, when you feel safe, like you can nally let
go of everything you’ve been holding so tightly. It’s
why small business is so tough on families, and why
so many relationships, especially marriages, fall apart
under the strain.
But then there are the other stories — the stories
of families who come together, like mine did. They
helped build the shop, and they built me up when
it crushed me. That year, our Christmas morning
was rough — but our Christmas night was safe and
comfortable, just like I’d wanted. And maybe it was
