"Christmas is around the corner," I overheard my mother tell a friend when I was 4 or 5 and lived in the city. I raced into the hall and grabbed my red jacket and hurried down three flights of steps out to the sidewalk. "Don't you go out of the yard," my mother shouted and I yelled, "I won't, Mom" and, of course, did bolting up the street to get to the corner where she said Christmas would be. It wasn't there, of course. No tree. No Santa. No reindeer and sleigh. Just concrete and macadam and three-decker houses lined up on either side. It was my first disappointment with looking around corners.