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I was nine. It was Christmas eve, 1988 and my family's Christmas eve party was winding down. My grandma was digging through the remnants of boxes, bows and wrapping papers from our family's white elephant gift exchange to see what she could salvage for next year and my Mother and Aunt were laughing and trading stories of holidays past. My two older half-sisters, Sherry and Penny, who were adults at the time, being eighteen and twenty years older than me, were picking over the leftovers on the dining room table. I was sitting near the back of Christmas tree where three gifts with my name on them remained. These were from my mom and grandma and as it was tradition that I could open only one gift before bedtime on Christmas eve, the rest I had to wait and open with my "Santa gifts" on Christmas morning. I assessed the three packages for some time before making my selection. It was nearing midnight, I had to be in bed soon so decided to just pick the biggest because it had weight and didn't sound like clothes when I shook it. When my mom said it was time, I eagerly unwrapped the gift. At my Grandma's unspoken request, I was careful not to rip the paper or mess up the bow, and set them aside as my gift was revealed. It was a telescope. It wasn't a high quality "count the rings of Saturn" type though, it was small, mostly made of plastic and still had the $14.99 price sticker on the box. I was gracious though I was not impressed, though not because of the quality, I didn't know the difference between a nice telescope and a cheap toy one because I simply had no interest in its function and even if I was interested in what it did, the simple assembly required to make it work exceeded the grasp of my exceptionally short attention span. Now, my sister Sherry is the oldest, and to me back then, she was like a bossy hall monitor. She had no real authority but that didn't stop her from trying to run everything. I'm forty-one now and she is sixty-one and seriously, not much has changed in that aspect. My other sister Penny is just two years younger than Sherry, so she would have been twenty-nine at the time. She was different. A combination of unattended schizophrenia and drug abuse made her the wild card, meaning you never knew what you were going to get with her. On this night she had managed to maintain a level of normalcy, and a jovial mood, though under any circumstance at that time and regardless of her behavior, her personality seemed more comparable to mine rather than to any of the adults in the room. Penny took an enthusiastic interest in my new gift and asked if we could go out back and test it out. I agreed knowing that my compliance would afford me a bit more time before I had to go to bed and being a child on the night before Christmas, I was naturally restless. Penny and I ascended onto the back porch and in no time at all, my sister had the telescope assembled and in position for celestial exploration. It took her a bit longer to find a point of focus and adjust all the little knobs for optimal viewing so while she was occupied with that, my attention was drawn to the icicles that had formed on the awning, and the dogs water bowl that had turned to solid ice. Being a Texan, this isn't generally common, even for December. Though it isn't generally uncommon. Our winters are short, and much like my eccentric sister, you never know what you're going to get when it arrives. I feel the need to preface this next part of the story with two very important points. First, I need to say that my memory of this incident, however perplexing is as clear and as vivid to me now as the very night it occurred so this is a true and accurate account. Secondly, this entire event lasted no more than a minute and while I must describe these events in succession, many of them occurred all at once. I had just taken off my mittens so I could utilize the full function of my hands and fingers for grasping when I heard Penny exclaim in amusement, "Whoa, Cool!". Still having no interest at all in star gazing and far more focused on trying to retrieve the perfect icicle from the awning using a garden hoe, I didn't even look up from what I was doing, figuring she had managed to find something bright to look at and that just meant I had a bit more time to spend on trying to dislodge the big beautiful icicle before it melted. Then, it occurred to me that the icicle was definitely melting and quite rapidly, when just moments before it was still in the process of forming. Now its dripping like a leaky faucet and what was even stranger, was that all this water was dripping around me yet it made no sound. In fact, nothing made a sound; not the water or the wind or the highway in the distance, not even my sister tinkering with that telescope. Then the dripping slowed, and I don't mean that in the sense that there was more time between each drop, but rather the droplets were taking longer to fall to the ground. Confused, I immediately looked over at my sister and found her standing upright, not bent over, peering into the telescope, but staring out into the yard. I turned to match her gaze, and what I saw completely eluded the grasp of my nine-year-old comprehension. Hovering a mere four feet above my backyard fence was an almond shaped capsule about the size of a pontoon boat. It was a metallic color like chrome with no discernable crevasses, no windows, no doors. It was completely flush and even though it had no fixtures for light to shine from, the area around it was completely illuminated as light reflected off of millions of water droplets now suspended in midair. I was struck with fear and confusion as I broke my gaze just long enough to look over at my sister, searching for some sort of sign as to what this thing was, and if we were in any danger. Penny looked over at me, grinning from ear to ear, "Cindy Boo, it's a UFO!" I didn't hear her say it, and her lips didn't move, but that's what she said. We both looked back at the object and it tilted slightly downward. At this angle it appeared to be spinning as a flash of iridescent lights made one complete rotation around its exterior then in a split second it shot straight up and disappeared into the night sky. Darkness resumed along with all the sounds of the night and the crisp chill of the air. I stood dumbfounded, amazed, and terrified by what I’d just experienced, while at the same time, I felt relief that it was over and excited. I didn’t know whether to run away or cry or laugh. I looked over at my sister, wanting to run to her but still frozen to the place I stood, as if all of my cognitive resources were occupied, trying to process everything and I was momentarily unable to communicate movement to my legs. Penny was clearly not frightened by what we had just witnessed, she seemed just as blissful as I’d ever seen her and while at times, I found that refreshing, in this instance, it confused me. I needed to observe a "regular" adult response. Reclaiming the use of my legs, I ran towards the door, saying "Let’s go tell Mom!" "Yeah!" Penny agreed and followed me through the back door. I was glad she was there and had my back. I knew there was no way my mom would believe just me about a spaceship if it had been only me, running in with my Kmart telescope. We entered the dining room where Mom stood laughing as my Grandma sang the phrase "We won’t go until we get some..." I exclaimed "Mom! Me and Penny just saw a..." I briefly forgot what my sister had called it but she chimed in to assist. "a UFO!" Penny injected. "You did? With your new telescope? "Mom inquired. "No, it was in the back yard by my fort, right above the fence, and..." I wanted to tell her everything all at once but I just wasn’t fast or articulate enough to express what all had transpired and my Mom was a regular adult who saw me as an imaginative child and my sister as, well, as a somewhat mild version of the crazy person she expected to show by the end of the night. "Maybe it was Santa! I hope he doesn’t pass you up because you're not in bed!" I didn’t believe in Santa Clause, I never did. I just pretended for as long as I could for the extra presents. I did understand the situation I was in though. I knew Mom was done for the night and wanted me to go to bed so she could set up the Santa gifts and finally get some rest herself. Not to mention, she was usually well within the bounds of good insight by steering away from conversations featuring supernatural events with my sister. It just so happened that on this occasion, it was all true, and I understood that she would never know that. Shortly after that a Movie came out called "Fire in the Sky" starring D.B. Sweeny, a based on true events film about a small-town man who was allegedly abducted by aliens, experimented on and returned several days later. The movie, coupled with my memory of that event terrified me beyond expression, causing me to have night terrors throughout my childhood about the visitors returning to claim me and I’m certain it initiated my life long battle with sleep paralysis dreams. I was so terrified, I wouldn’t watch or read anything that had to do with extra-terrestrials and I wouldn’t speak of it again for nearly 30 years. Somewhere in that span of time, I convinced myself that the entire event had been a terrible nightmare that I happened to just remember ever single detail of, down to the mittens I was wearing, where they landed on the ground when I took them off and the rush of heat I felt, hot on my cheeks from the fireplace when I ran back into the house that night. My sister was estranged for many years throughout my childhood, as her condition got much worse before it began to get better. She finally got clean and got on the right meds and a few years ago, she came to live with us. The first week she was here, we spent a lot of time talking about different things that had happened over the years, things she’d said and done. I discovered that she had barely any recollection of a great deal of it, claiming "that must have been the other me." I guess I got caught up in the spirit of sharing or I got brave or something but I decided to ask her about that night during one of our talks. "Do you remember that one Christmas eve..." is all I got out of my mouth before she responded with, "You mean the night we saw that UFO in the backyard? That’s a memory that stuck. I remember it as clear as yesterday." She then proceeded to describe the experience from her perspective with very little variation from my own experience. So, there it is. It was not a dream. It was not my nine-year-old imagination. All those little details that made no sense, the ones I used to tell myself if didn’t happen are the same details that later on, affirmed the reality of it. I saw a UFO in my back yard on Christmas Eve, 1988. I was nine years old.