Once upon a time, a long long time ago, lived a forlorn young woman with strawberry hair who but for a toddler and a six-month-old baby, found herself all alone in the world. Her husband had abandoned them.

And winter was approaching. The baby needed shoes to warm his feet, and her little girl had no coat. How would they get by?

She did have a job, but it paid little. Every penny she earned went toward rent, a meager diet, and the fuel required to get her to and from work each day. Yet, even as bleak as things appeared to her, God smiled upon them.

One night after she had prayed with her children and had tucked them safely in bed, she sat on the sofa and reminisced through a small overnight case where she kept a few belongings from another life—a time long before babies, and long long before getting married.

There she found a lovely stone, smoothed to a warm glow from the constant handling of a little boy called Charlie Brown; a precious gift that she never could bear to part with.

There was also a woven afghan kit from Sears & Roebuck, in appalling autumn colors, that she couldn’t bear to contemplate—but neither could she consider tossing it. How wasteful would that be? Besides, the materials in the kit might be useful one day. In dire times, one never knows.

And look! There was a luxuriously soft rabbit’s pelt. Many years before, the grandfather of a boyfriend had given it to her. But not before teaching her how to skin her own rabbit and stretch its pelt for drying. He was a wonderfully wise and kind old man; a farmer of cotton and veggies, a keeper of cattle and chickens, and the unwitting adoptee of a mated pair of peafowl. Special.

Her mind drifted further back—to a time of endless summers. Before boyfriends, before her family had settled down. She thought of the friends she had made while her father was still in the Army. There were the Fohls who were the closest thing to family you can know when you’re a five-year-old military dependent living far far away from that place your parents keep referring to as home.

“Aunt Ruby” Fohl was a magical being! She could even take a little ball of yarn in her hands and transform it into a Christmas stocking right before your eyes. But the young woman never did get to learn the magic from her Aunt Ruby. Her dad had gotten orders for Korea, and they would have to move again.

As she wistfully numbered all the friends who remained ever in her heart but were long gone none-the-less, the young woman recalled a week during the summer of her eighth year. Surely God had smiled down upon her that week.

A young military couple had moved into the duplex next door; a GI who had married a woman with a charming accent while stationed in Germany. They also had a toddler and a newborn baby, and in the afternoons this woman would sit under the trees in the shade and crochet while her babies slept. She had the magic too, just like Aunt Ruby before her.

She strained to remember their names, but couldn’t anymore. It was a little bit of an unusual situation, because the family only lived there for two weeks before the fellow got orders for Viet Nam and they moved away. Yet, in just those few days, this gentle woman taught a girl with strawberry hair how to crochet and how to knit as well.

As the sweet remembrance of that brief time washed over her and the young woman reached to close her little case of oddments and treasures, she was suddenly struck by the realization that she had already been given every thing she ever needed.

That very evening she began fashioning a little turban cap and a fur collared coat for her daughter, and two fat pair of warm booties for her baby boy—all, in the happiest of autumn colors. God had smiled again, and all was right in the world.