The 13th Gift Page 13

  “I’m sorry. I’m not sure where that one came from,” she says. “I’ve purchased fifty-two of them. One for every year of our marriage. It’s a tradition Neal started for me on our first anniversary. Every year, he added another poinsettia. Now I’m carrying on the tradition for him.”

  Her revelation both touches my heart and breaks it. What would it be like to see Rick, but for him not to remember me? All of those years together, all of those memories lost. I grab a napkin to catch a tear, and she tells me not to be sad.

  “On Christmas Eve, I will fill his room with those happy flowers. I will feed Neal turkey and mashed potatoes. When visiting hours are over, I’ll tuck blankets around him, kiss him good night, and drive home alone. He will forget who brought the flowers, the meal, even my name, but he’ll know that someone cares. That’s enough for Neal. It’s enough for me. It can be enough for you, too.”

  Then she stands, puts on her red wool coat, and walks away, saying with a smile, “Don’t forget to leave the waitress a tip.”

  An hour later I’m pulling into the driveway at home with two unassembled mountain bikes in the trunk of my car, one blue and one pink. Megan’s knees were hitting her handlebars last summer. I know they will both love touring the neighborhood on these. I hide them under a tarp in the garage and hope Tom feels up to the challenge on Christmas Eve of assembling them. If not, the kids and I will figure them out.

  Inside the house, I find Megan rearranging ornaments on the Christmas tree. Nick sprawls across the couch with his Game Boy in hand, as Ben works in the kitchen heating up soup for our dinner. He pulls garlic rolls from the oven and announces, “Time to eat.”

  Seated around the dining room table, in between spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup, conversation naturally flows back to the gift givers. This afternoon I realized that along with the last gift from our true friends on Christmas Eve, my family will be getting something even better: we’ll finally meet them. It’s a certainty I feel in my gut. It’ll be the twelfth and final day—and the perfect way to end their season of giving.

  “They’ll be here. I just know it,” I tell the kids. My faith works its magic on them.

  “It could be awkward, if we don’t know them,” Ben says. “We should plan something.”

  So we do.

  When our true friends pay their final visit, a feast will follow their Big Reveal.

  “Cupcakes with sprinkles,” Megan suggests the first menu item.

  Nick wants chips and chocolate. Ben retrieves my recipe file from the kitchen and places it on the table in front of me.

  “This occasion calls for the big guns,” he explains.

  I sift through the recipe folder, pulling out cards iced with food and finger smudges from holidays past. We decide that our table should be decked with traditional Christmas fare and Old World favorites passed down from my Polish and Hungarian grandmothers. I intend to wow our guests with cabbage rolls and apricot horns. With roasted turkey and pies and cheesecake. A meal doesn’t seem like much compared to the way their generosity transformed our lives, but I don’t know what else to offer them. People so full of kindness, without cause, must be worth knowing. And feeding.

  With the menu set, I decide not to wait until the morning to shop. If we’re going to get everything ready in time, I have to start baking this evening. When I stand to clear the table, Ben takes the bowls from my hands.

  “I’ve got this,” he says. “I’ll have the kitchen cleared for action by the time you get home.”

  I don’t argue.

  “Nick and Megan, you’ve got grocery duty with Mom.”

  The kids don’t question their big brother’s authority. No one is more surprised than me. Nick and Megan pull their coats from the closet, sending hangers flying in their race to be the first at the door, but before we leave, there’s one more topic I want to discuss with my children.

  We have been obsessing over the identity of our true friends. But after meeting Neal’s wife—she never told me her name—it isn’t such a big deal. She was right: we feel loved, and that’s what counts. Even if it is mysteriously from afar.

  I look each of my kids in the eyes, making sure I have their attention.

  “No more peeking through curtains. No more climbing on the roof.”

  We all agree. We’ll stop trying to catch our friends and wait until they are ready to step forward. I don’t think it will be long.

  At the grocery store, I have a dilemma: I don’t know how many people to expect Christmas Eve. It could be one additional person, but it could also be twenty.

  Since my childhood, I have been part of a night-before-Christmas gathering of aunts, uncles, and cousins. We don’t come together to exchange gifts. We gather to eat. Following Polish tradition, we wait for the appearance of the first star before sitting down to dinner, no easy feat on a cloudy winter’s evening in the Midwest. One year, when dinner had overreached its ready point, my grandmother stepped outside to accomplish what her twelve grandchildren couldn’t on an overcast night. She immediately spotted a distant light in the sky and declared it a star. Although I’m pretty sure it was an airplane, her declaration that it was time to eat was welcomed.

  Since my marriage to Rick in 1980, I have carried on the family tradition in our home, including his brother Tom’s family in the group. Up until a week ago, I had been considering canceling the event. I’m glad I didn’t, but the possible addition of the gift givers creates this new problem.

  I have no idea how much food to prepare.

  Meg dodges shoppers swarming the baking goods aisle, grabbing ingredients from shelves for her great-grandmother’s apricot cookie recipe. She’s moving quickly, anxious to return home to check for our tenth gift. I’m excited about it, too, but my earlier shopping fiascos have left me with an abundance of last-minute errands.

  “I’ve got the jam. Got flour.”

  Megan dumps the items into the shopping cart and races off in search of cottage cheese for the cookie dough mixture, her ponytail swaying as she skips away. I love how excited she is; as a kid, I couldn’t wait for my mom to pull these delicate pastries from the oven. I am forever willing to risk a blister for a mouthful of their buttery goodness.

  “Yummm … these cookies are so delicious,” I announce to shoppers trapped beside me in a shopping cart jam.

  “Maybe you could share that recipe with my wife,” an elderly man whispers as he passes me, with a faux grimace. “She’s making fruitcake.”

  I head over to the meat section of the grocery where I find folks standing three deep in front of refrigerated mountains of ground beef and sausage. I need six pounds of each. Just to be safe, I’m tripling the cabbage roll recipe.

  Meg rejoins me there, nearly staggering under the weight of jars of olives, four bricks of cheese, and two jars of pickles—sweet and dill. Clamped under each arm are rolls of sugar cookie dough.

  “We’re making Great-Grandma’s cookies,” I remind her. “We don’t need sugar cookie dough.”

  “Couldn’t find the cottage cheese,” she shrugs, changing the subject. “I found these, though.” She pulls two dented boxes of candy canes from the waistband of her sweat pants. She looks at the cart hopefully, and I nod my consent. I’ve committed to buying Megan’s candy canes, but I make a mental note to put back the sugar cookie dough. With a turkey to roast and pies to bake, the flow into the oven will be nonstop through Christmas Eve. As much as the kids like them, I won’t have time for the sugar cookies.

  We rendezvous with Nick in the snack aisle. He lumbers down the lane pushing a child-sized shopping cart.

  “Don’t say a word,” he warns his sister. “It was the only empty cart in the store.”

  Surveying the contents of his cart, an assortment of chips and dip, I see what he intends to eat Christmas Eve.

  “I’m good,” Nick announces. “We can go now. I want to get home and check for a gift.”

  Megan, too, pleads for home, but I am determined. I will not leave
the grocery until all items are crossed off my list.

  I am stymied over the selection of a turkey. “What’s the problem, Mom?” Megan asks.

  Reaching into the freezer case for a twenty-five-pound bird, I wonder if it’ll fit in my oven. I shift over to a twelve-pounder, when the image of a dozen carolers knocking on our door gives me pause. They’ll sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” After the final “partridge in a pear tree” rings out and they take credit for the gifts, I’ll invite them in to share a meal, but I will have to watch over every bite they take because there’ll be a one-pound limit on each guest’s turkey consumption.

  “I really don’t know how big a bird to buy,” I fret, looking at my ten-year-old for guidance.

  “That’s easy,” Meg says. “Buy the biggest one.”

  Nick rolls his eyes, “We’re going to need another cart.” He heads to the parking lot to pounce on the first available one.

  Before leaving the store, Megan spots a Food for Friends bin and asks if we might share with the less fortunate. We pull six items from each of our two carts—cans of peaches and pears, chocolate pudding, and juice boxes.

  “The people who get this food, will they know it’s from us?” Megan asks.

  I shake my head, “No.”

  “Just like our true friends,” she says. “We don’t know who they are.”

  “Just like our true friends,” I agree. Megan beams.

  “It’s the giving that makes you feel good,” I tell her.

  “Then our gift givers must feel great,” she says.

  We stuff the trunk of the car with a ham, the turkey, veggies, Nick’s chips and dip, the ingredients for mini cheesecakes, cabbage rolls, corn casserole, the apricot cookies, and four rolls of sugar cookie dough, which had mysteriously reappeared in our cart at the checkout.

  As we near home, Nick and Megan’s attention gravitates to the possibility of a gift waiting to be opened.

  “I wonder what they’ll leave tonight,” Megan says. “Drive faster, Mom.”

  We’re surprised to find our welcome mat empty. The living room curtains are spread wide, and the white lights on our Christmas tree cast a warm glow through the window. Ben stands at the front door waiting for us, an even more welcoming sight to me than the gifts. I suspect his presence at home may have kept our gift givers at bay, but I keep that thought to myself. He meets us at the car and helps to carry in the groceries.

  “You plan on opening your own store?” he asks with a chuckle, after a third trip to the car.

  Inside, I see Ben has set up a workstation for himself in a corner of the kitchen. A rolling pin, sifter, measuring cups, and wooden spoons are arranged on a card table. Our eight Christmas cookie cutters are there, too.

  “Did you remember the dough?” he asks Megan.

  She’s already digging through the grocery bags.

  “I want to thank them, too,” Ben says to me, then rips open a roll of dough with a knife. “Like you said, make Christmas merrier for someone else.”

  Hearing his plan makes me feel like such a proud momma. I set down an armful of groceries on the counter and give him a hug.

  In minutes the kitchen and the kids are covered in flour. The first batch of cookies we declare “experimental” when four rows of Santa boots merge into one giant cookie.

  “Looks like one of Dad’s shoes,” Nick says.

  Rick wore a size 14AAA.

  We all laugh, then laugh again at our own laughter. I think we’re all feeling a little guilty over our burst of holiday joy, but grateful for it at the same time.

  “Maybe it’s a sign,” Megan says.

  “Of what?” Nick demands.

  “That we should eat it,” I jump in to cut off any potential argument, breaking off pieces of the giant shoe and passing them around. The second batch of boots turns out better, elf sized.

  By the time I’m ready to make cabbage rolls, Megan and Ben scatter to clean their bedrooms, and Nick continues packing up his stuff for the move to the basement. I tackle the raw meat on my own. I am peeling layers of steaming cabbage off a head when the room goes dark.

  “Megan … I can’t cook what I can’t see!”

  The lights go back on, but in a few minutes they flicker off again. This time a flashlight beam shines on the counter where I am working.

  “Megan!”

  “They won’t come if they think we’re home!”

  “Close the curtains. It’ll be fine,” I reassure her. “Now, roll up your sleeves and come play in this meat with me.”

  “Looks like worms,” she says, digging in up to her elbows. When she begins singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” I hum along. Singing is still hard.

  On a beach in Maui on our honeymoon, Rick had burst into song, our song—“Longer,” by Dan Fogelberg.

  I thought he would stop after the first few lines. It was kind of corny, but he was being serious. He was my one-line comedian, not a musician. At least he had selected an isolated section of beach for his show. And he just kept singing.

  “That was my wedding gift to you,” Rick said at the conclusion of the song, but even then I could feel his mirth bubbling up. “This is my gift to you, a musical-comedy life.”

  Then he grabbed my hand so tight I couldn’t break free and raced us into the waves together. I was wearing a new linen dress. He had on suit pants.

  That was the beginning of our silly, happy, off-key life. When Megan stumbles over the words of the Christmas carol, mixing her ladies dancing with leaping lords, I know I have a choice to make. I can dwell on past songs sung, or I can live here in the moment and sing with my daughter.

  I choose to sing with her, but instead of the traditional pear tree and partridges, turtledoves and golden rings, I substitute our gifts, one Christmas flower, two bags of bows, and three rolls of gift wrap.

  Sometime during the fifth or sixth chorus, our true friends leave a tenth gift. Ben discovers the package later that night while carrying out bags of trash from his room to the bins on the side of the house. A fierce wind blows outside, and the light-weight parcel had been skipping across our lawn.

  “It’s here. I’ve got it,” Ben announces, when he reenters the house. His words draw all of us to the living room.

  “I was worried,” Megan says. “I don’t want the presents to stop. I don’t want the song to end.”

  I’m not ready for that either. I wonder if the gift giver heard Megan and me singing. I wonder if they realize their magic is working. Megan tears open the present to find ten dancing Santa paper dolls. We don’t try to dissect the card or look for clues. Instead, we hang the paper dolls from the banister and get back to preparing for Christmas Eve.

  Returning to the kitchen, I add the new gift to our version of the song and keep on rolling cabbage balls.

  On the tenth day of Christmas your true friends give

  to you:

  Ten dancing Santas

  Nine Christmas candles

  Eight cookie cutters

  Seven golden apples

  Six holiday cups

  Five angel gift cards

  Four gift boxes

  Three rolls of gift wrap

  Two bags of bows

  and

  A poinsettia for all of you.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Eleventh Day of Christmas

  ON THE DAY before Christmas Eve, I wake up with a list of errands already dancing through my head. We had been up late the night before, cooking and prepping food for our party, but no amount of sleep deprivation can dull my excitement. As I weave through traffic thick as winter snow, I swear the Christmas rush is the very best time to shop. The traffic congestion allows me more time to tune in to Christmas songs on the car radio. When I hear John Denver and the Muppets singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” I feel as if they are crooning the carol just for me.

  “Maybe I’ll wait until the last minute every year,” I say to myself, as I wave a car into a parking space that I
had been waiting to occupy.

  I find another spot farther out and revel in the brisk air as I hike into the computer store. I’m replacing the dinosaur Nick has been playing video games on for the past three years, a computer my friend Kate gave to the family after she replaced hers with an updated model. I know my middle child will be thrilled with top-of-the-line technology, but he’s going to have to share it with the rest of us. I can’t afford to buy more than one. The new model will go in the family room. Even though it provides solitary entertainment, whoever is on it will be in the same room as the rest of us.

  No more isolation, at least not from each other.

  At the computer store, I meet an elderly man scratching his head over which video-game system to buy for his thirteen-year-old grandson. The clerks are all busy, so he asks me. Vying for the attention of a member of the sales staff myself, I nearly dismiss the guy with “haven’t a clue,” when I realize I know someone who could help him.

  I dig my cell phone out of my purse and call Nick. I hand the man my phone, and he walks off with it toward the video games, as directed by Nick.

  I can hear my son say, “She won’t mind.”

  I follow my phone.

  Fifteen minutes later the guy is headed to the checkout lanes, and I return to an even longer line of customers waiting to speak with a clerk about a computer.

  Before leaving the store, the gentleman tracks me down again and tries to press a twenty dollar bill into my hand for Nick.

  “Not necessary,” I say. “Merry Christmas to you and your grandson.”

  “I figured you would say that. At least take this.”

  He gives me a coupon for a free cup of coffee.

  “Have one on me.”

  The gentleman leaves me ferreting through rows of monitors and motherboards. I hate to admit that I know far less than the average teenager about computer operating systems, and I think about calling Nick again, but I want this present to be a surprise. So, I resign myself to wait for a salesman.

  It happens quicker than I expect.