In our family, emotions are worn around the neck. Happiness is a lei. Concern is a medallion or a cross on a length of cording.

For almost a year, the emotion has been sorrow.

Sometimes the sorrow is visible, like the dog tag that my brother, Andy, wears. The dog tag belonged to my dad, who died in a roadside attack in Baghdad last January.

Sometimes the sorrow is an invisible weight, forcing Mom to keep her head bowed.

Sometimes the sorrow is a scar, like the one on my sister Lani's neck. She was drunk when she fell over the wheelbarrow handle in our carport. Luckily, I got home from class early and got her to the ER. She's doing way better, thanks to AA meetings and her therapist. She'll be graduating and has accepted a volleyball scholarship to UNLV.

Dad was in the U.S. Army Reserve. Like all the Miyashiro men, he'd been in the Army all his life. His grandfather was one of the 100th Infantry Battalion, the "Go for Broke" battalion. His uncles all served in the Army and went to college courtesy of Uncle Sam. Dad's father was a career army sergeant. Dad joined the Army right out of Kalaheo, class of 1978. He served for six years and then went to college and became a counselor at Makena Intermediate. Jason, who's in my culinary arts classes at Kapi'olani Community College, knew him well.

"Kaleo, your dad was a super counselor. I should know: I was in the office a lot. I remember his magic tricks. He could find quarters behind my ears, dimes under my binder. He had a way with kids and tricks. We called him Mr. Miyashiro, The Magic Man."

"Yeah, he could do card tricks, too. We all miss him so much, especially Mom. She's back teaching at Kalana Elementary, but I can tell she's not the same."

"It's been a while, eh?"

"Eleven months. If only his unit hadn't been called up. He only had a few more years in the Reserves before he was going to retire. He really believed in what he was doing. The Army was Dad's second family. He really took care of the young soldiers he led, just like he always took care of us. You know what he did before he left for Iraq? He hid things around our house. He drew smiley faces on jars of furikake and buried them in the bottom of our rice bin. How he got them to the bottom of 50 pounds of rice is beyond me. My mother burst out laughing when she found them. Of course, then she cried. He hid his magic wand in a wrapping-paper tube. When we were wrapping Andy's birthday presents, it fell out."

"Did he show you how to do that cool trick where you put the ace of spades in the middle of the deck, tap twice on the deck and it's magically on top? He did that one all the time in the office."

"He was going to. He promised to pass it down to me, but he never got the chance. Whenever we had family parties, Dad was the one who could get the folks together, do his tricks, and even when everyone nagged him, he'd never tell. It was his secret, he'd say to Uncle Jimmy, who got pretty loud after a few beers."

"So, what are you guys gonna do for Christmas?"

Jason always asked the hard questions.

"Well, we'll probably go to church, put flowers on Dad's grave, and then go to Uncle Jimmy's. Nothing big. You know how it is." I sighed.

"You guys should do something special, in your dad's sprit. He was special. That's how you should remember him."

After Thanksgiving, the time dragged on. I hoped that Christmas would come and go quickly. Mom tried to keep positive for Lani and Andy, especially Andy.

He was only in the sixth grade. His memories were of a dad who was always at his ballgames, who read him chapters of the Harry Potter books each night before bed. Andy told me that he would never take off Dad's dog tag. He even wore it in the shower. I think that, in the shower, Andy's emotions were raw. It was just his skin, the dog tag, and water pouring over him. Andy took really long showers.

Mom and I still walk gingerly around Lani. We'd all had more sessions with the grief counselor, but we still didn't completely trust that Lani would be OK.

Surprisingly, it was Lani who started talking about making this a special Christmas. Every night after dinner, she wrote furiously in her journal, and I think that was helping her. She said that she wanted us to be happy again, to celebrate Dad's life. She said that she didn't want to see Mom faking happiness all the time, looking like she had an anchor around her neck.

She said she'd been praying a lot.

Her therapist suggested that Dad would want us to remember him and be happy, that's why he did all those silly things like putting the furikake in the bottom of the rice bin. Lani started decorating the house with Christmas stuff, decorations that Dad had always put up. She even got up on a ladder and nailed multicolored lights around the porch. I helped her because she kept dropping the hammer. We got Mom laughing when she saw Lani all tangled up in the strings of lights. Even the geckos that watched from the rafters laughed at her in their chirpy way.

The week before Christmas, Lani came running into our bedroom, crying and laughing at the same time. Andy and I shared a worried look. Mom wasn't home from work yet and Lani seemed hysterical. She had a small gold-colored box in her trembling hands.

"Look what I found in the back of the drawer under my bed where I keep all my school pictures and yearbooks." She held out the box. "Before you open it, you gotta read this letter. It's from Dad."

I read the letter out loud. It was hard to keep from crying. Andy came closer and sat on my lap. Dad had written that Mom had always wanted a Tahitian pearl necklace and he wanted us to give her this one. He said that if we were reading this letter, he was watching us from heaven. He wrote about how great our family was. He mentioned special things about each of us. He talked about his commitment to the Army, about how he wanted us to try to understand it, and even if we couldn't, he wanted us not to be bitter.

"No walking around hanging your heads like you've got one of Uncle Jimmy's ulua weights around your neck, guys."

He went on about our family, about how he hoped that we'd always see the magic in life and in each other. Somehow, when I finished reading it, I felt peaceful. Andy and Lani were smiling. I opened the box and held up the gold chain and the gleaming black pearl.

We planned how we were going to give Dad's gift to Mom. We thought it would be too much to spring it on her on Christmas Day. We decided to have a special dinner a few days before Christmas. I used favorite recipes from culinary arts class, chicken pesto-frittata and liliko'i mousse. We got all dressed up. We bribed Andy with extra dessert so he'd put on a button-down shirt and tie.

I finished cooking and rushed to shower and change. I couldn't find my tie. I dumped out my entire sock drawer and underwear drawer on the bed. A manila envelope was taped to the bottom of the drawer. I opened it and found the special deck of cards and step-by-step instructions for the Hidden Ace trick.

I held the envelope close to my chest for a minute. "Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Magic Man," I said aloud.

Mom was stunned when she walked through the door after work. Of course, along with the food and Dad's surprise, there were a lot of tears and laughter, too. The lustrous pearl looked beautiful around Mom's neck. She held her head higher than usual.

Christmas Day was windy. We had to anchor our poinsettias with rocks when we placed them around Dad's headstone. At Uncle Jimmy's house, the mood was relaxed. I'd practiced the Hidden Ace trick and everybody watched.

"Eh, Kaleo! Wear this, it belonged to your father. He gave it to me before he went to Iraq. Take it. I going call you 'magic boy' from now." Uncle Jimmy put the shark's tooth pendant over my head.

In our family, emotions are worn around the necks. That Christmas night, the emotion was love.

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