There are many people in
my life that are not easy to shop for. I'm one of them myself and I know
it. I'm great at shopping for some close family and friends, totally lost and stressing up to the last minute for others, which is why I hold tight to the idea
that it's the thought that counts. In this time of gifts and giving,
it is always important to remember that it truly is the spirit in
which a gift is given that matters most.
After my second daughter
was born, my oldest girl, Lizzie, and I began doing “school” not
only as a risk-free trial to decide whether or not I actually could
homeschool my children, but also as a way to make sure I made time
for my Liz now that there was another baby in the house. Each day at
1:00 p.m. I put the baby down for her nap, maybe caught a few winks
myself and then at 2:00 I rose and went out to begin school with my
oldest. Like many parents beginning the homeschooling journey, I was
fearful that I lacked the patience required to teach. Two things
helped me: 1. remembering all the “professional” teachers that I
had growing-up who had not the patience God gave a gnat, and 2.
Patience is like a muscle that grows stronger the more you exercise
it. And so my children and I began what would ultimately be over a
decade of learning and growing together. Our school time at the
pre-school age mainly consisted of sitting together in a chair and
reading stories and poems, learning to cut lines, the alphabet and
the names of shapes. It was a time I treasure to this day as the
happiest of my life.
It was an ordinary spring
day, far from holidays or birthdays. The windows were open letting
in the mild breeze and the baby was dozing while Liz and I
read Mother Goose and learned to draw a cat using ovals and triangles. We finished our studies and I glanced at the
clock on the oven. It was 2:45 and that meant the mail had arrived.
It was a joy of ours to check what postal surprises awaited each
day. Hand in hand, we walked out the screen door and down the gravel
driveway to the rusty mailbox that had stood in front of this house
all my life and possibly all my dad's life too since this was his
childhood home and the very one I had waited in front of each day to
catch the school bus. I now had the comforting pleasure of raising
my children in this placed filled with so many fond memories. Liz's
tiny hand curled inside mine as we strolled to the mailbox. We sang
a song as we did everyday about bears going over
mountains, trains coming around mountains, or kitchens containing mysterious banjo strummers. When we reached the mailbox
there was a perplexing puffy package inside. An avid online shopper,
I received mail-order trinkets almost daily but I was not expecting
anything this size. I dropped my daughter's hand to use both of mine
in extracting the package from its receptacle, gave it a bounce or
two trying to guess what might be inside, then turned it over to read
the return address. It was from Mr. Bleu's oldest sister.
“What is it, mama?”
Lizzie asked.
“It's something from
Aunt Katie.” I replied, eyes still scanning the package for clues
as to its contents. “C'mon, let's go open it,” I said.
Distracted by the package puzzle we made a songless B-line back to the house. I took it to the kitchen counter and Lizzie stood next to
me on tip toe peering over the edge. I sliced through the paper envelope with
scissors. Pulling out the tissue wrapped contents, I threw the package
away. There was a card taped to it which I set aside. Tearing open the
tissue I saw two dolls inside. One was a darling black
and white plush cat wearing a green pom-pommed snow hat, a pink
terrycloth ski vest, a purple floral mini-skirt, and daisy flip flops. It was an odd combination of seasonal
garments, as though the cat were experiencing winter on its top half
and summer on the bottom. The other “doll” was a horror
dredged from the deepest vilest nightmares of all childhoods
throughout all human history, brewed in bile and vitriol, and then
conglomerated into a freakish jester mocking our distress. Its hair
was an eye-searing hue of neon orange that God rejected using in
nature. Its black eyebrows had a sinister arch and its cold hollow
eyes craved death. Its snout was topped with a blood red sphere and
underneath its vicious smiled curled around two protrusions
which were probably puckered fabric but looked like fangs. It was a
ruffled polyester nightmare.
“Dear Lord Jesus,” I
whispered.
“Mama, are you
praying?” Lizzie asked.
Turning to her sweet
innocent face, I whispered, “Yes, baby," then muttered, "but I don't think it will
help.”
“What's in the
package?” She asked.
Wanting to reply,
“dolls,” but feeling that term misleading, I reached for the card
and opened it hoping for some guidance.
Hey,
here are some Christmas presents for the girls (It
was April) that I saw at the farmer's market this weekend.
They're completely handmade (by
Satan?). I thought Elsie would like the kitty and I thought
of Lizzie for the clown. Hope they like them. Merry
Christmas!
Love,
Katie
There were no answers
here. I folded the card up and slipped it back into the envelop. I
could feel Lizzie's eyes boring into the side of my head as she
waited to see what was in the box. She crouched down, ready to
explode with curiosity and whispered, “Mamaaaaah.” I turned to
face her. “What is iiiiit?” she asked. Maybe I was being silly.
Just because I never liked clowns didn't mean my children wouldn't.
I feigned a smile and tried to add cheeriness to my voice when I
announced, “Aunt Katie has sent you girls some dolls for Christmas,
isn't that nice?” Lizzie's nose wrinkled and she cocked a tiny
eyebrow. “Is it Christmas time?” “No, dear, not even close,”
I replied in the same cheeriness. “But, it's the thought that
counts.”
Mr. Bleu's family never
celebrated Christmas when he was growing up. While most of his
siblings chose to celebrate as adults with families of their own,
the holiday always seemed a bit lost in translation to them all,
including Mr. Bleu. They missed out on the childhood wonder and now
seemed unable to grasp the point of it all. I half expected to enter
one of their homes on December 24th and see their faces
aglow as they displayed a fichus decorated with kitchen scraps hung
from bobby pins. “Yes,” I would remark, “that is 'decorated
greenery,' but I'm not quite sure it's a Christmas tree.” The same
held true for gift giving. Every year his brother instructed his
children to pick out toys they no longer wanted to give as gifts and
each year my children unwrapped games with missing cards and booger
crusted action figures with missing limbs. His youngest sister gave
gifts one time and one time only, evidently assuming this was forever
checked off her list. His oldest sister, usually waited to see what I sent to
her children each year then went out and bought the exact same thing
in a different color and sent it back to my kids. Out of curiosity,
I didn't send a gift one year, and evidently lost for
ideas, neither did she.
I bent down to Liz with
both dolls in my hands. She saw the cat doll first and gasped with
delight. “This one's for Elsie.” Her face fell. I extended the
clown “doll” toward her. “And this one's for you.” Her
disappointment turned to revulsion, lips curling back over her parted
teeth, brow wrinkling into infinity. “Noooooo!” she said. “I
don't want that doll!” She turned a frantic glance to the kitty,
“I want that one. Elsie's a baby; she won't know.” I
sympathized but was determined that politeness and gratitude should
win the day. “Now, Lizzie. Auntie Katie sent this to you
as a gift. She picked it out for you.” I stretched my hand
toward her again with the hideous poppet. Arms frozen at her sides,
she stared at it for a few moments. Then looked up at me with tears
forming in her eyes. “Does Auntie Katie hate me?” Her
lip quivered. I looked at the doll and muttered, “Well, based on
the evidence at hand I can see why you would think so.” “What!?” She
squeaked. “Oh, no, sweetie. Aunt Katie doesn't hate you. I'm sure there's a
very good reason why she sent this doll... Maybe she's started
drinking.” “Drinking what?” She asked. Elsie's coo echoed
into the kitchen and I knew that her nap time was over. “Never
mind,” I said, “let's go show Elsie the new dolls and the two of
you can play.” With Liz still unwilling to hold the clown, I
bundled both dolls under one arm and grabbed Lizzie's hand.
No one slept easy that
night. At 2:00 a.m. after Lizzie had a nightmare (she wasn't the
only one) I stuffed the doll into an opaque black plastic sack and
tied it closed. For several days a dark cloud hung over our home.
We tried to carry on with our pleasant routine but everywhere we went
and everything we did, we knew the clown was watching.
On Saturday I loaded the
children and the sack into our gray Scion shoebox and drove to my
brother's house. He wasn't home but my sister-in-law invited us in
for a chat and a playdate. After a few minutes of banter, I produced
the black bag. Explaining that it was a gift that didn't suit my
children's taste and with as light-hearted an appearance as possible,
I suggested that my nephew Tomas, the same age as Lizzie, might like
this doll. I untied the handles and excised the clown from its bag. My
sister-in-law, a Texas native with only two volumes,
embarrass-you-in-public-loud or wake-the-dead, cried out upon seeing
the doll.
“Eeewww! Throw that
away!”
It was her wake-the-dead
tone.
“I can't. It was a
gift.”
“It's sooo ugly!”
“So, you don't think
Tomas will want it?” I asked with fading hopefulness. She laughed,
then snatched the doll from my hands and said, “I dunno. Let's
see.” She strode over to my nephew, shoved the doll in his face
and said, “Hey, Tomas! Look what Aunt Leandra brought you!” His shriek was the sound of childhood innocence shattered forever. My
sister-in-law cackled, “Oh yeah, he loves it!”
Tomas ran and his mother pursued, clown doll in hand, until cornered, he
collapsed on the floor in quivering sobs. She stood up and hurled the doll at me. I caught it before it hit me in the face.
“Aw, I think you're his favorite aunt now,” she laughed then
scooped him up and cooed “don't worry, I won't let mean ol' aunt
Leandra scare you anymore.” Deciding it was time to go, I loaded
both my girls into the car and began the 30 mile drive home in
silence. On the way we passed our local charity shop where my
grandmother and her octogenarian sister volunteered in their spare time.
Seeing neither of their cars in the parking lot, I turned around and
drove back to the donation dock. I jumped out of the car, bag in
hand, chucked it onto a stack of National Geographics from 1978 and
tomato sauce stained Tupperware and dashed back to my car. Speeding away I glanced in my rear view
and thought I saw the clown doll, head popped out of its bag and
glaring at me.
Each morning for the next
several weeks I awoke half expecting to find the doll in bed next
to me or sitting in a chair waiting for me as I emerged from my
bedroom, but it did not reappear. Elsie became so attached to her
kitty that she could not go to sleep without it each night, Lizzie so
traumatized by her clown that she could not sleep because of it for
several months, and I pricked by my conscience
about discarding a gift and simultaneously destroying the childhood
of whatever impoverished local urchin who happened upon it at the charity shop, didn't sleep well either, but life
did, in due time, return to normal. Spring gave way to summer and
autumn and the holidays eventually rolled around again. Mr. Bleu's
family had their annual get-together, a strange cacophony of attempts
to “do Christmas," and I tried to concoct a lie in case
Kate should ask about the clown. In the end, I knew only the
truth would do. Kate approached us and asked if we liked the dolls.
Determined to remain honest, I replied, “Oh, we did get the
gifts you sent and thank you so much. That was very thoughtful of
you.” I then turned the conversation to her new job and satisfied
with my answer, the dolls didn't come up again.
The following day at my own family's holiday feast, I passed through the kitchen looking for some
sweet finale to my meal. After locating a runny pecan pie, I overheard my
grandmother telling my mom about a donation that caused quite a
stir at the charity shop some months back. Apparently someone had left the most
hideous doll on the heap and it had been passed around and discussed
at length before finally being thrown in the trash. My mother
nodded, awareness crinkling the corners of her eyes. “What kind of
doll was it?” She asked. “Oh, it was this awful clown. Who on
earth would donate that?!” My grandmother demanded. Who
indeed. Mom darted her eyes to where I stood, mouth filled with drippy pie,
spoon still vertically protruding, eyes wide with fear. I slid the
spoon from my mouth, shifted the pie to my cheek and put in, “Maybe
it was a gift and someone didn't feel good about throwing it away,”
then spun on my heel and sprinted out of the kitchen.
