This was written by an amazing author and dear friend.  Sent by a simple email to me today … best gift I’ve received yet. Posted with his permission and grace.  Thank you Ron … I love you

When my daughter Vikki was five years old and Christmas was coming I would tease her playfully. I would tell her how lucky she was to be able to expect so much for Christmas. Remembering stories told me by my depression-era parents, I’d tell her “when I was your age, we were so poor, all I got for Christmas was a rock and a stick.”

Over the days the warnings came that she might only get a rock and a stick; and if she got more she was a blessed child indeed.

On Christmas day there were 200 1981 dollars worth of toys and treasures under the tree. After all the shiny pretty things were opened, two odd shaped packages remained. Yes, as a joke, I’d found an old stick about a foot long and a chunk of old brick about the size of a fist. Vikki got her rock and her stick.

Over the next couple of weeks, toys fell by the wayside. Dishes were lost from tea sets, little mechanical whatzits snick-snacked to a halt, dolls lost hair, eyes and limbs. Soon all the bright and beautiful trifles ands trinkets were gone or simply cast aside. But the rock andd stick remained.

Only the rock and stick were always returned to the cardboard carton that served as my baby girl’s toy box. Only the rock and stick were played with every day. Only the rock and stick were treated as real treasures.

Over the next few months the rock and stick became insturments of magic. I watched Vikki use them as a spaceship, a stove on which to prepare food for honored imaginary guests,a drum, a crystal ball and even a witches cauldron ( where’d she get THAT?).

In 1982 we moved from Milwaukee to California. When we sorted through what we could take and what we would leave behind old books, pretty dresses and ALL old toys were givenaway or discarded;the rock and stick came with us. We shuffled between relatives houses before we got our ownplace. Sometimes in a move somthing would be left behind, some of them seemed to me to be important things. Vikki would just shrug it off and say “it’s okay daddy, i don’t need it.” But, she always remembered her rock and stick.

Years passed, my daughter grew. Oh she’s always been so beautiful. Soon dolls and tea sets and the ornaments of childhood fell by the wayside: “Daddy! Toys are for kids”.

Her tastes changed, her interests changed, we moved three more times withing the “Inland Empire” of southern California. And she always lugged along that old rock and stick. Each time we pack and I’d notice it and laugh “Vikki, you still have this old rock and stick?” She’d shrug and say “Oh, i just never got around to throwing it out”, and leave it at that.

The last move within the golden state was in 1992. I was newly sober and still shakey, wondering if I could do it. Vikki was my number one cheerleader, always reminding me I could. She was no longer my “little” girl. She had become a beautiful young woman, 18 years old with all the possibilities and promises of youth laid out before her.

In that last move, either her mother or I had finally tossed out the old gag gift that Vikki had never remembered to throw away. A few days later Vikki came to me, upset about something and with scared eyes asked “Daddy, have you or mommy seen my rock and stick.”

I said “Baby, we threw that old stuff out when we moved”

“Why?”

“We didn’t think you wanted it anymore”

“Daddy, that was MY rock and stick.” She sighed and with a sad look went in her room and softly closed her door. I went in my room and did the same.

I don’t know if Vikki cried in her room. I cried in mine.

Ronald P.