Snowfall came. The pursuit of firewood became a regular activity. Dennis had determined that Christmas was a pagan holiday and we wouldn't be celebrating it. We had to listen to long tirades and sermons on the subject, and he did the same with nearly every person he called (a highly extroverted person, he was on the phone for hours at a time, often with total strangers such as hapless telemarketers who were foolish enough to call our residence). Anything even faintly related to Christmas was purged from our house.

Instead, we kept Thanksgiving. To make up for the lack of Christmas, we decided that we'd exchange Thanksgiving presents. Of course there was no money (Dennis had long ago bled every single penny out of us for gas money or food, even to the point of having us search in the crevices under the cushions of the upholstered furniture), so we made all our gifts. We used scraps of fabric, embroidery thread, odd and ends around the house, the apples we'd dried, pine cones, birch bark, things like that. I made Mike a whistle out of an old wooden stamp and pieces of cut paper. The sound of it varied depending upon which paper was inserted into it. I made dolls or stuffed animals or hair things for the girls. Lisa gave me a small pillow made of the sleeve of an old nightgown; my children use it now. Dennis brought me a gyro from Spokane, a food I sorely missed from Chicago, and for Lisa, two cans of black olives. From the food bank, we got a Thanksgiving box with a turkey. This year and for years to coeme, Thanksgiving was more or less the only holiday we had.

Life became more restricted and controlled by the day. Clowns, playing cards, chess sets, heart shapes, crosses, rabbits...the list of forbidden objects, symbols, and activites seemed insurmountable. We were forced to throw favorite books (the Chronicles of Narnia), toys (the stuffed rabbit a favoite aunt had made for me), dolls (Barbies and Cabbage Patch), and clothing into the stove and watch it burn. Of course, Denis's belongings were hardly ever "evil". Still, the purge wasn't thorough enough. Mom kept praying and asking Yahweh, but she still felt that there was an "open door" (to evil, allowing demons and evil spirits to enter our house)that we hadn't closed. More and more stuff got thrown away, and we weren't allowed to show any reluctance about it, either...we were supposed to be happy to be freeing ourselves of the chains of Satan, even in the guise of a cute toy or, in Lisa's case, half a closet full of forbidden sweaters and other clothing. Mom was appalled and angry when she discovered that my sister has been unable to offer up the sweaters dotted with not one, but many hearts all over! No wonder we were still plauged by contention and fighting and Mom couldn't sleep well at night! No wonder she had to spend hours praying in the darkness, protecting her family! It was all because of these sweaters. Lisa had endangered our entire family by hanging onto them, only because they were given to her by our Grandma Hill, the woman who had raised her, whom she missed, and whom Mom bitterly resented for "keeping her children from her". For once Lisa, the favorite, was viewed with suspicion. Luckily, Denis came to her rescue and smoothed things over, which didn't, of course, alter the fact that the clothes had to be burned.

There was so much drama, so much stringency, and all I wanted, for the most part, was to be left alone. Denis was so incredibly intrusive (he sometimes kept us awake for hours trying to pry into our brains, trying to force us to tell him all our thoughts) that this was getting fairly difficult. I had my ways though. I stayed up late at night, poring over the high school biology text which had belonged to Renee and Michelle (it was the only science book we had), peering into my microscope at insect parts (fascinating), or blowing into the cold air out the open window, into the light clamped outside my window (I liked to see the patterns of air movement and could do this for hours, thinking). I had a single forlorn houseplant in my room, and I planted a date seed, lentils, birdseed, anything I thought might grow, all in the same 8" pot. One day Denis decided houseplants were evil, a remnant of the wicked hanging gardens of Babylonia, and that I couldn't have my plant anymore. I had to empty the contents out. As I did, tears rolling down my face, I discovered the shoot of the date seed, planted months before. It had been just about to break through the surface. It seemed to me that nothing joyful or even remotely satisfying was allowed in our household anymore.