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Showing posts from December, 2015

Ruby's Gift: A Christmas Story

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by Carrie Anne Noble Some people called Ruby a bad dog, and it was kind of true. The summer I turned eleven, my brothers, sister, and I found Ruby on our porch. She was sitting there like a fluffy, black-and-white, tail-wagging package left by the UPS man. A really smelly package. On the spot, five-year-old Janie named the dog Rubella Polio (words she’d learned from pamphlets in the pediatrician’s waiting room, being too advanced a reader for Highlights magazine). When I suggested we call the dog Ruby for short, the big fur ball jumped up and gave me a slobbery kiss. “You’re welcome,” I said, wiping the doggy drool off my cheek with the hem of my t-shirt. Ben and Doug, my three-year-old twin brothers, let the dog into the house before Mama could object. Not that Mama would have. Mama didn’t do much objecting back then. She didn’t do much other than stare silently at the kitchen wall. If Daddy had come back from the Afghanistan war instead of going to heaven, things wou