New Year, New Beginnings

Being at home for the holidays, no one was happier than me to see some of the positive changes in the lives of my family. That's why I was glad to hear that one of my half cousins was living with my uncle again and Mother, upon hearing that he had never been in a church before, summarily placed him in her Sunday School class. Indeed, one week he claimed to know nothing of the manger or Blessed Virgin, and not two weeks later he had been cast as Joseph in the Christmas Eve nativity play! It took me nearly 12 years to make such a leap. But I digress.
I began to question some of my mother's teachings, though, and wondered if she might be sending some mixed signals to her impressionable youth when I studied some of the drawings he had made for her.

At first glance, it looked like one of my own Christmas drawings that I had made as a child. But upon closer inspection, I noticed this:

Mother claims to have no knowlege of how her name morphed from "Aunt Elaine" into "Ant Allah," but I have no doubt that, Christmastime notwithstanding, terrorism was at work here.