Today I bought hand-made dolls from my neighbor absent mindly for our girls.
It was just a reflex and I did not know what I had done until I got those dolls home and started to wrap them. My wife said "What are you doing?"

"Just some dolls for the girls I said, a faint smile on my face and I glanced up at her to see a tear coming down from her eye.

She didn't try to stop me or point out that our girls were all over 25 and way past dolls.

She didn't say a word because we both recognized that the holidays always made us go back to remembering those lit-up eyes and happy smiles.

I paused in my wrapping for a minute realizing for the first time that I was buying presents for the girls just like they were still small, still at home, wrapping the dolls anticipating their joy Christmas morning.

I was in that child-hood time warp parents often have and I simply forgot they are no longer our little girls but big grown-up people on their own.

I looked at those beautiful little crocheted dolls and thought how much the girls would have loved them.

My wife was then by my side picking up one of them and she too began to wrap with me, tears and now a gentle smile on her face.

Meantime, I could hear the girls up in their room laughing and playlng together like always.

Our girls were still at home, so she and I wrapped those dolls like always with little bows, just like Santa would do;the house ringing with faint girlie laughter.