The 13th Gift (19 page)

“I could use a cup of coffee,” she says, slamming the hatch door. “How about you buy.”

We drive separately over to Frisch’s across the street and meet in a booth in the back of the restaurant. She orders coffee, and I get a Diet Coke.

“I don’t know where to start,” I tell her, ashamed that I’m pulling her away from her own family, her life.

She calls the waitress back to the table.

“Better bring a slice of pumpkin pie with that coffee.”

I tell her about Rick, our kids, the gifts. She listens. She nods. She drinks her coffee and eats the pie.

“At first, I wanted nothing to do with the gifts. I even considered reporting our true friends to the police,” I confess. “Now, I desperately want to thank them for gluing my family back together.”

When I ask her about the poinsettia on the front seat of her car, she responds with a story of her own. She tells me about Neal, her husband, who lives in a nursing home.

“Senility. It’s an ugly word,” she says. “ ‘Permanently forgetful’ seems less harsh.”

She’s taking the poinsettias, all of the poinsettias, to the
nursing home on Christmas Eve to decorate her husband’s room. It’s their wedding anniversary. She began purchasing the flowers more than a week ago, patronizing at least seven different stores.

“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.”