Gram's Gift
I took my daughter to see Santa. Along the way, we played the game where we pointed out shapes among the clouds. Or rather, Rose played it. I hadn't played the game since Gram's death. I laughed and congratulated Rose on every win. We arrived, and I snapped photos of Rose sitting on Santa's lap and posing with the fake snow.
It's not that I hated the holidays. They just weren't enjoyable anymore. Every time December rolled around, I found myself going through the motions. I shopped for gifts. I helped my husband put up the Christmas lights. I decorated the tree with my family.
My grandmother passed away when I was young. Gram was a very strange but lovable woman. She walked with a skip in her step, and sometimes she skipped instead of walked. She wouldn't allow herself to step on any cracks, except when she chased after a dog in order to give a proper greeting.
In our home, we took turns doing the household chores. When Gram did the laundry, she often grabbed at least one towel to throw in the wash as well. The thicker lint from the dryer always became dust mice, complete with ears and tail. Sometimes they evolved into larger dust bunnies.
When she took a shower, Gram sang Broadway songs. She belted lyrics that she sometimes remembered and sometimes made up. Her songs were terribly off-key. She never could reach the high notes.
Gram would carry items into another room and leave them there. In a single day, I could find the TV remote in the microwave, the milk in the cupboard, and house keys in my mother's sock drawer. I sat on her glasses once because she had left them on the couch. Even though it was mostly her fault for leaving them there, I freaked out about being responsible for making her effectively blind until we could get a replacement. My mother calmed me down. Gram didn't need glasses, and the lenses were not prescription. She wore the pink-rimmed frames because she liked them.
Gram had been suffering for a long time and told no one. So when she finally landed in the hospital, it came as a surprise to everyone. At the time, I couldn't understand why she didn't tell her family earlier. Maybe the doctor could have found out about the cancer sooner, maybe it could have been treated, maybe Gram could have lived longer than she did.
Instead, we spent that December holed up in the tiny hospital room that she shared with a very irritable stranger. Our Christmas tree that year was a small plastic shrub that held about six baubles. Gifts were exchanged while Gram's frail body lay on white sheets in a room that reeked of too much cleanliness that could only mean sickness. Stuck in the hospital, she didn't have the time or ability to do any proper shopping and wouldn't accept anyone's offer, so Gram's gifts were origami cranes in paper boxes. She gave me her glasses, even though I had inherited her good eyesight. "So you can see the world the way that I do," she had said. I put them on, but there was nothing special about them other than the fact they were hers. I kept my gifts. They sat in a box in my closet. Gram didn't live to see the next year, and that meant we had a funeral to attend to.
We continued to celebrate the holidays, but unfortunately, every year when the holiday songs began playing on the radio, I remembered that awful Christmas. I knew that Gram had enjoyed her remaining days with her loved ones. I knew that she had been really sick, and that she chose her time. None of that changed my memories.
I tried to explain it to my husband. All I wanted was to avoid everything that reminded me of a holiday that should have been a happy one. He pretended to understand, but there was no avoiding the obligatory festivities. And when Rose was born, it would have been a shame to not allow her the happiness that only I seemed to be missing. I hung up stockings. I baked cookies and decorated them with festive colors. I attended the family gatherings and work parties. I posed for every single photo. I even smiled. It was December again.
I entered the master bedroom to find the door to my closet had been left ajar. My private closet had been ransacked. I stormed through the hall to find the culprit. Rose sat cross-legged on the floor of her room amid her stuffed animals which she had arranged in rows in front of her largest teddy bear. This bear sat before a sheet of construction paper taped to the wall. I had begun teaching Rose the alphabet, and she had written some of the letters in her unsteady hand. She had found the box in which I had stored extra baby clothes for a possible future child. Subsequently, the stuffed toys sported the ones that fit - stubby legs stuffed into socks and sandals, fluffy ears topped with woolen hats and hairclips. Gram's glasses perched atop the teacher's head.
Rose expressly knew to stay out of my closet - a rule about privacy that I had explained mainly because I hid presents in there. I hadn't bought them yet, and there seemed to be no harm done. And it was hard to be angry at her when she looked adorable as she played school.
"Momma," Rose said as I entered. "You should be the teacher."
Without waiting for an answer, she claimed the glasses from her teddy bear and handed them to me. After replacing her bear in the back row, she took her seat again. Dutifully, I put on the glasses. Kneeling in front of the class, I peered at my students through lenses covered in fingerprints. I decided that the privacy issue was not of immediate importance, so I played the part.
"Are there any questions?" I asked, pointing at the purported blackboard.
Rose tilted her head sweetly to nothing in particular as she pondered her question. "How does Santa get here if we have no chimney?"
Something about the situation struck a note. Perhaps it was the question or the way she said it. Coincidentally, I had long ago asked this question myself, and I had an answer ready because it was one that Gram had given. My gaze wandered to the window. White clouds littered the expanse of the blue sky. One cloud in particular seemed to stand out.
I didn't tell anyone that I had stopped playing the cloud game because I didn't see shapes anymore. In that moment, I realized that I had been wrong. I hadn't wanted to see them. I took off the glasses, and the dust bunny cloud remained. It seemed only fitting to pass on all of Gram's gifts.
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