brushfire"This, yes, this, it was always like this." -Stanley Koehler
REFLECTIONS OF AN EMPTY NESTER
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The first package arrived on our doorstep a week or so before Christmas. It was wrapped in plain tissue paper. Inside there was no card or tag, just a plain wooden crèche.
We had dinner guests that night, so I set the crèche aside and forgot about it. The next night another tissue-wrapped package arrived at the front door. This time it was an angel. Again, no note or explanation accompanied it. By this time my husband, three children and I were intrigued. Each evening we decided to watch for the arrival of the next package. We lurked at the windows, hoping to catch the mystery gift giver in the act. It was like a magic trick when you tell yourself to pay attention, but in that one moment you’re distracted, the magic happens. After a few days, the kids set up a stakeout from the second story windows. Other than the sight of our friends’ van on our block one evening, there was no sign of who our mystery gift givers were or why they had chosen us as their beneficiaries. Our amateur sleuths eventually gave up. By this time, there was a certain predictability to the arrival of each figure to be added to the crèche on the dining room buffet. Following the angel, the shepherds appeared, then the wise men. We knew after Joseph arrived to expect Mary. On Christmas Eve, our children were too caught up in the excitement of Christmas preparations to think about the crèche in the dining room. After they had gone to bed, my husband and I stayed up to assemble gifts under the tree and fill stockings so burdened with treasures we had to lay them on the hearth rather than hang them from the mantelpiece. My husband had finished eating the burger he cooked for Santa each year — a practice he inherited from his own father under the theory Santa was tired of all those Christmas cookies. The kids had written their Santa letters, left carrots on a plate for the reindeer and set a glass of milk for jolly old St. Nick by the fireplace — all traditions they maintained well past the age of belief in any Santa other than the ones who wrapped their gifts and paid the bills. My husband had just written Santa’s response to the kids — the finishing touch to make Christmas morning complete — when I remembered. I opened the front door to a blast of cold air. There on the front step was what I knew was the final offering. I guessed what was inside before I even unwrapped the tissue. And when I opened it, what I found was expected and unexpected at the same time. This appeared in the Dec. 22, 2016 issue of the Grosse Pointe News.
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Mary Anne BrushJournalist, fiction writer, wife and mother |