My son is a nice kid, almost frighteningly well behaved. So it was easy, a few days before Christmas, to tease him after some minor offense - most likely farting - that Santa would start removing gifts he'd intended to leave. Robby, who still believes despite mounting evidence to the contrary, grinned, and said, "He'll start taking some away from you, too!"

At this point, I knew I had him. "Now how could he do that?" I said. "Who gives me gifts?"

He thought for a moment. "What do you mean?"

"Well, Robby, it's just that no one gives me Christmas gifts," I said.

This was not an effort to make him feel sorry for me. It is simply the truth. This year, my mother had my name in the family gift exchange. She gave me money some months back, in an effort to repay me for flying to Phoenix to pack up my sister's apartment. Friends give bottles of wine and small gifts, but on Christmas morning, there are no presents under the tree with my name on them. A light Christmas is the common plight, I think, of the single mom.

Each year, however, I hope, for that something unexpected. A gift of my own on Christmas Day.

Robby spent Christmas Eve and morning with his father, and arrived at my house Christmas night for our holiday. A fat stocking and a mound of gifts waited for him under the Christmas tree.

But before he dove into them, he handed me a tiny box, on which perched an equally tiny white bow.

"I got you something," he said.

I unwrapped the gift to reveal a small black box. The words "Fine Jewelry" were stamped upon it in gold letters. Inside, a small gold heart rested on a cushion of white foam. Trailing down its left side were seven small red-and-white stones. The chain was fine, almost spiderweb light.

"Why thank you, honey, that was so sweet," I said, and heard my voice emerge thick with emotion. My vision blurred with unshed tears. "I love it," I kissed him on the top of his head, touched my lips to his soft, blond hair.

"You're welcome," he said, and stepped away, pulling up his shirt. He pointed at his chest. I could count every rib on his thin frame. "See, it didn't cost me much. No stitches!"

I stared at him for a few seconds until it hit me. Robby was suggesting he'd sold his organs to pay for the delicate piece of jewelry.

We both laughed. He saw the unnatural shine in my eyes, then turned toward the tree.

I have worn the necklace just once so far, only because the clasp is so tiny it is nearly impossible to fasten behind my neck. This, I realize, is a clasp made for a child's hands, a necklace intended for someone more Robby's age than mine. He had chosen what he thought was the prettiest item in the store. And this thought, this picture of him carefully and proudly selecting his 11-year-old version of the very best for me, makes my heart ache every time it crosses my mind.

I plan to take the necklace in to a jewelry store early in the new year, and ask them for an equally fine chain with a bigger clasp. Because this is not an item that can sit, unworn, in my jewelry box. It should be worn as often as possible to show Robby how much I appreciate it, and to remind me - as though I could ever forget - how beautiful is his own little heart.

Some places never change. How reassuring that is.

My son spent this Christmas, and the days preceding it, with his father. So I packed my bags and headed into the mountains, back to the county I called home for 13 years. I have been gone from this ski community of about 25,000 people for three-and-a-half years now. Folks there would say the place has changed dramatically. Condos have gone up. Open space has vanished. Acres of trees were cleared last summer in a fruitless attempt to get ahead of the pine beetles that are turning the evergreen forest to rust.

For me, it could still have been May 2003. Everything was familiar and memories leapt toward me from around every corner.

As I drove my trusty Saturn from the Continental Divide into the valley in which the towns rested, my eyes fell on a mountainside neighborhood I knew well. Peeking out from the trees was the apartment building in which Roger lived. I hadn't thought about him in weeks. Without warning, I felt a pang of longing in my stomach, or somewhere thereabouts. His phone number popped into my brain without my conscious permission. I pushed it aside and blazed up and over the rise to Frisco.

My friend and former fellow newspaper reporter Lu and I arranged to rendezvous for a long-overdue catch-up and an afternoon hike with our dogs. I pulled into a parking spot on Main Street Frisco, where we'd agreed to meet. A black truck parked next to me, and a man got out and walked into the store in front of my car. He was a bit grayer than I remembered, but he was still Travis Holton, the owner of three of the county's finest restaurants and manager of the immensely popular Lake Dillon Tiki Bar. A 40-something man in Sorels walked past my car on the sidewalk. I knew his face, knew it fairly well, in fact, but his name eluded me.

I smiled, sitting there alone in the car. In this county teeming with holiday tourists, the first two people I saw still were people from my past.

Lu and I walked from her home up a snowmobile trail into the forest. Fresh snow weighed the tree branches so that they appeared to bow before us. The lodgepole pines through which the path wandered stood like sedentary escorts, stately and somehow protective.

A snowmobile drove around the corner, slowing for us. The driver, his face hidden behind a hat and goggles, waved and smiled. The smell of the two-stroke engine filled the air. Lu and I both inhaled it deeply, acknowledging that for better or worse, we both loved it.

A couple on cross-country skis appeared around the next bend, a golden lab, golden retriever and a black dog of uncertain parentage bounding beside them on the trail. The man and woman each were pulling a tot carrier on skis, price tags still waving in the breeze from each tiny vehicle. A sleeping baby, nestled deeply in a blanket, rested in each one. They stopped to chat about the weather, and the four of us laughed at the five dogs frolicking in the hip-deep snow off the trail.

They continued on and we turned toward Lu's home.

Later, we met another former co-worker at a restaurant on Main Street Frisco. The last time I had been there was the night of my farewell party, a surprisingly large affair attended by mayors, the sheriff, district attorney, and other contacts and co-workers accumulated during 13 years of small town reporting.

I walked in the door, cell phone to my ear. A blonde woman at a table of four caught my eye and waved. I waved back and said "Hello!" as though she were an old friend. In truth - and to my horror - I did not recognize her. She turned to her fellow diners and spoke to them with some enthusiasm. All three of them turned to look at me. Grateful for the phone call that prevented me from speaking to her, I moved to the back of the restaurant.

Twenty minutes later, microbrews in hand, the three of us saw newspaper photographer Mark Fox walk into the bar. We waved him down and he told Alex, my former editor, was meeting him there. Another former co-worker called to ask where I was, and joined us half an hour later.

A party of three had blossomed unexpectedly into one of six.

The last time this group had been together was only four months ago, at Brad's funeral. Then, we hugged one another in consolation, our faces tight with grief, eyes bloodshot and shiny with tears. Now, those same eyes were alive with mirth, the faces gleaming in the firelight.

We bid one another Merry Christmas and I drove to my friend's home in Breckenridge, where I was staying the night.

I wound through the back streets, absurdly proud that I knew my way around so well.

Again, without warning, I slammed into a wall of memories. There was another apartment building, this one Iain's. I saw us standing there the day he left the county, the day - in retrospect - that our relationship began to unravel. Robby was sitting in the car, peering at us as we stood, arms around each other. He was only five years old. "I never cry," Iain said, as tears escaped the corners of his green eyes. Then he dropped my hands as though they were afire - rapidly, almost roughly. "I've got to go. Now," he said and jumped into his packed truck.

He left me that day as he ended up leaving me at the last. Quickly, abruptly, as though in this way, he could escape the pain.

He started the engine that late fall day and looked at me, safe behind the wheel of my own car now. Tears ran down both our faces. He did not mouth goodbye. He did not wave. He did not drive out of the parking lot, he fled it, the truck almost lurching as he accelerated rapidly, tires spinning rocks, leaving a wide gash in the gravel.

I had pulled out behind him, and stopped at the stop sign only a block from me on this December 2007 night. I saw him stop two blocks away from me, at the last stop sign before the on-ramp to Interstate 70 west. There was not another car on the street, but still his truck sat motionless, brake lights glowing red. Five or 10 seconds passed, both of us stopped for a reason no one else could have understood. Then I pulled through the intersection to the post office. I remembered clearly that I knew I must check my post office box, knew I had to move through life's daily motions because that is all any of us can do to dull heartache.

Yesterday, I drove the dam road, and remembered boating there with Leland, the two-year beau all my friends hated for the hot-and-cold treatment to which he subjected me. He was freshly divorced then and deeply scarred and I never stopped defending or caring for him. At this moment, I could remember none of the bad. What I saw was him sitting on the pontoon boat, beer in hand, laughing.

I remembered Brad, too, whose three-story condominium overlooked this lake he'd so loved. We'd joked and sometimes were truly annoyed when he submitted yet another photograph of the sunset, the frozen lake, a sailboat race, or a mountain mirrored in the glass of its surface, all taken from the deck of his home. The home at which he'd died these many years later. I knew he was dead, yet I had a sudden urge to call him and wish him a Merry Christmas.

I left Summit County this morning, looking forward to this Christmas night with my son. I drove away from the stunning beauty to which people from around the world flock. I drove away from 13 years of memories, and the endless triggers that bring them back to life, almost as vivid as the day they were made.

I drove away from my old home, toward my new one. My brain shifted from the past to the present, returning me to my life as a city dweller and insurance saleswoman in a city that thrilled me with its possibilities. The facts of this life came almost like a surprise, so deeply had I entrenched myself in memories these last two days.

I will return to the mountains to visit, to make new memories in a place that changes at what seems an almost imperceptible pace, where long-held friends wander the streets beside ghosts from the past. The memories are now more poignant than painful. The friendships are deep and multi-layered, the kind that only come with years of shared experiences.

They all exist only an hour away. How comforting that is.

Part of my job involves doing presentations to seniors about our insurance program at low-income housing complexes. My co-worker brings a home-cooked meal and while the seniors eat, I stand up and talk about the plan.

Sounds boring? Yeah, it sort of is. First I was nervous. Now, I'm becoming bored, trying to find ways to keep it fresh.

When I look at it that way, I guess I should thank God for people like John.

Most of the elderly we meet are sharp, well-acquainted with the wide variety of Medicare plans from which they can choose and capable of though sometimes forgetful, hard of hearing, or sight impaired, logical.

This was not the case today.

This building near downtown Denver houses some of the poorest and most uneducated of the elderly population. They are, for the most part, warm hearted souls in need of a hand up. But this population also is rife with mental illness.

I sat down with one gentleman with braided black-and-gray hair and wide, brown eyes who seemed anxious to speak with me. He immediately told me he did not want to change doctors; because his doctor isn't part of our network, I told him he could not sign up with us, but to stay where he felt he was getting the best care. He nodded appreciably and I stood to leave. But John was not done with me.

"The Lord sent us this storm today," he said. "He's trying to tell us something, you know? A lot of these people here, they want answers. And we'll get the answers someday. We all know that. But they want answers now. All this war, killing people, this storm, he's trying to tell us something. We gotta take care of one another, you know, sister?"

Since I agreed with him wholeheartedly on his last statement, I nodded enthusiastically. This was a bad idea. John was encouraged.

"All these people - Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, Elvis - all these great people died. Why?" Frankly, I've never understood the whole Elvis thing. I wanted to tell John that, the way I saw it, Elvis was just a horndog with the ability to swivel his hips and pout, but I suspected John would not react well to it. "We want answers," he told me.

The answer was that Elvis was a constipated drug addict, I thought.

John rambled, quoting Scripture, repeating many of the things he'd already told me. I smiled, nodded and tried to find a kind way to escape. There was none. Finally, I glanced at my watch, looked surprised and said I was overdue to give my talk.

One minute into it, after I mentioned a care manager who could answer almost any question, John raised his hand. "Can they tell us why Marilyn Monroe killed herself before the government could?"

"They may have a theory but I doubt they can answer that one," I said with a smile.

John's hand rose again. I ignored it. He ignored me.

"Can they tell us why Jesus was whipped and tortured and died on the cross for our sins?"

John had just gotten on my last nerve. Fearing another bizarre interruption, I cut the presentation short.

"Who wants to talk with me one-on-one?"

Several people, including John, raised their hands. I went straight to the wheelchair-bound woman in front of me. She was wheelchair bound, a Medicare recipient who was too young to have qualified for turning 65.

She pushed the wheels on her chair to move closer to me, then stopped, her entire body shaking. She looked at me with discouraged, frightened, resigned eyes and whispered, "I'm sorry. I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The doctors are trying to keep me home."

She pushed back her sleeve to reveal a hospital wristband. "I just got home last night. I'm so depressed."

I rubbed her back, murmuring that I understood, that she should stay strong. My words sounded incredibly trite, yet I could think of nothing more original to say. She stopped shaking.

"But I'd like to talk with you about this plan. Just not here."

Tremors overtook her again.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw John. He flung a leg over the bench nearest us and gazed at Margaret. He grinned widely.

"You doing the spirit walk, sister? That's what happened to me when the Lord came into me. I shook like crazy! Sister, that's wonderful!"

Margaret rolled her eyes so that only I could see. I almost grinned at this small display of spunk.

Margaret and I agreed to meet next week in the privacy of her apartment, far from John.

"Anybody else want to schedule an appointment with me?"

Three women raised their hands. So did John. "To talk about Evercare?" I added. His hand dropped.

Twenty minutes and three scheduled appointments later, I headed for the door.

John called out from behind me. "You married?"

Without thinking, I told him the truth.

"OK. I've got your number if I have any questions," he said, holding up my business card. "So your boyfriend won't get mad if I call then?"

My heart sank. I pretended not to hear him. Instead, I stepped outside into one of the worst blizzards in Denver's history. It felt absolutely wonderful.

After swearing not to do so in a not-so-recent blog entry, I'm trying Internet dating again. Heck, after that fiasco of a dating event it seemed like a very sound idea. Plus, I didn't want to end the year crying in my champagne, and leaving you all feeling I was a near-suicidal wreck. Does not exactly inspire one to read, now does it?

I signed up for the three-month Match.com subscription with the Dr. Phil MindFindBind guarantee. What the hell that means I don't know. I haven't looked into it. I did click on a few Dr. Phil icons however, and was told to work on packaging "the product that is you!" After that point, I left the Dr. Phil areas of the site alone. Somehow, though I know he's often right on the money in his advice, I resent that freakishly tall, bald man. Is it just me or is he arrogant as hell? I wonder sometimes if Oprah harbors regrets about the monster she unleashed on the world.

Anyway, so far, Match is interesting, as always. It feels somewhat sadly familiar, since I've tried it at least twice before with obviously lackluster results. Yet, Denver is a bigger pool. And hey, I can only hope to at least get some more Viagra-variety date stories! Already, I've received an e-mail from someone I know - a sheriff's deputy from the county in which I once lived. He complimented me highly and suggested we meet for coffee and a "catch-up." Ironically, I hang out with his ex-wife and her new husband when I visit there. I know all about his cheating ways, and believe I subtly told him so when I mentioned how often I see Jen.

Life is otherwise pretty fine. Today, I garnered four applications for our Medicare program. Two from a mother and daughter who seem both damn happy and damn healthy. One from a former Southern belle who moved here to be near family and now finds her family doesn't want to be near her. And a fourth from a man whose house, like the other gentleman I visited weeks ago, lacked a single photograph or picture.

I believe I am adjusting to my job and the people I meet through it, however. On Christmas Day, one of my co-workers and I plan to provide a meal at a seniors' complex whose residents are, like the characters in the Land of Misfit Toys, forgotten on the holidays. Families are either too far away or simply do not invite them for Christmas. Sad though it is, I cannot imagine a finer way to spend the holiday than to bring smiles to their faces. It's either that or track down their kids and kick them in their faces; this seems the easier option.

Christmas looms and I am not ready. While I hope to post again before then, I sign off tonight hoping you are farther along the shopping trail than I, and that Christmas brings you everything your little hearts desire. Especially the company of those you love.

Tonight, I attended a singles group event. I'd arranged for my son to spend the night with my cousins so I could go. I spent more than an hour dressing and primping. I was quietly optimistic.

I was home within two hours, sadder than before I had left. As I walked in, I was asked to put on a name tag and take a ticket for a free drink. The organizer hands me a yellow sheet with about 16 cubed drawings. All of these represent the name of a Christmas carol. We are to sit down and figure out what they are. "And if you can't get it, ask someone cute to help you," she says, winking at me.

I choose a table that looks safe. A smiling woman, my age or older, and two men, neither of whom looks excited to be there.

We talk out each drawing. The three kings standing under huge plants must be "We Three Kings." The knight with holes in his armor: "O Holy Night." Giant feet trudging through a snowy scene: "Walking in a Winter Wonderland."

"It feels like we're in third grade, doesn't it?" the organizer calls out, beaming at us.

Yes, it does. Exactly.

After that, we're asked to count off by threes. The ones, twos and threes all gather in separate circles. The organizer asks us to pass around a present that has been wrapped in several layers. As we pass it, we are to introduce ourselves and tell our most romantic Christmas story. I can't think of one, and I pass the gift quickly to my left. Neither can most of the people there; some instead tell stories about other gifts, other times, with lovers, husbands and girlfriends who are no longer part of their lives. I can scarcely imagine a crueler question to put to a group of singles.

I talk afterward with a blonde woman, Kristie, who's affixed her name tag to the bare skin showing above her low-cut dress. She is funny, in a sarcastic, sad way. "I've signed up for lots of things with this group in the next few weeks," she says. "I have to to convince my married friends they're right. They keep telling me how great it must be to be single during the holidays. Christmas, oh yeah. When I wake up and think, 'Another one alone,' and decide I'm not going to get out of my pajamas all day. And New Year's Eve - there's another one."

Her words are not amusing, but her demeanor is. The tone of her voice, her smile as she relates this, the timing of the words. She tells me she's hiding from one of the guys who was in our group - the three's. "We had a date last week," she said. "He told me to meet him at 5:30 and all we did was split an appetizer. Was I wrong to expect dinner?"

He finds her and my presence among them is immediately awkward. I wait until there's a point in the conversation in which I can gracefully make an exit.

The organizer sees me reaching for my coat. She's passing out red tickets. "Wait," she says, "you'll want to stay for the drawing. We've got some great prizes!"

I take the ticket with a smile and a thank you, wait until she's passed and slip out the door. I wonder what I did, what any of those people did, to bring us to this place. I start the car and aim it homeward. The tears, of which I am so incredibly weary, fall.