When I was a kid, my mother took us every Christmas to visit Jordan Marsh, a dep...

When I was a kid, my mother took us every Christmas to visit Jordan Marsh, a department store in the Colonial Plaza Mall in Orlando, Florida. We ate at the restaurant (I can’t remember the name of it now; was it the Oak Room?) and then went to the toy department and visited Santa. But what I remember best are the balloons. They were navy blue and imprinted with snowflakes; and when you blew up the balloon, the snowflakes got bigger and bigger. Snow, to me then, was unimaginable: a myth, a fai...