The 13th Gift by Joanne Huist Smith

Author:Joanne Huist Smith [Smith, Joanne Huist]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-553-41856-9
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2014-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

I wake to the aromas of a picnic in the woods: fresh pine and frying bacon. It’s only been a few hours since Ben and I retired for the night, but a whispered conversation up in the kitchen clues me in to the fact that my eldest son and his little sister are awake. The two of them are cooking up something that Ben doesn’t want me to know about.

“Keep it down. You’ll wake her,” he says with a voice so deep it bellows down the stairwell. Megan giggles.

“I can’t wait for her to see it. I just can’t wait,” she says.

Figuring I’m about to be served breakfast in bed—or, on couch, such as it is—I close my eyes and relax, until they decide it’s time to eat. I figure Ben is trying to earn back his car keys. I won’t tell him it’s not going to work until after the meal. I close my eyes and drift back to sleep.

A half hour later, Megan holds a slice of cooked bacon under my nose.

When I open my eyes, she eats the meat and then runs back upstairs hollering, “Breakfast.”

Upstairs, it’s not the eggs, or the bacon, or even the toast that surprises me. It’s the tree. Our somewhat lopsided evergreen stands in front of the living room window, covered in strands of tiny white lights.

“Who did this?”

Megan beams. “It was Ben.”

Beside the tree, a box labeled “Dad’s stuff” stands empty, except for Rick’s measuring tape.

Rick had been the tree-lighting aficionado of the family, with arms long enough to reach to the very top of any tree, a feat he ensured before the purchase of a pine. He painstakingly untangled the mess of twisted strands that I had hastily packed the previous year. Once assured every bulb lighted, Rick measured the distance between light strings as he wrapped them around the tree. He would have measured the distance between ornaments if I had let him.

Less than twenty-four hours ago, Ben was disavowing all things holiday related. Today he’s lighting the tree. I should be shocked, but I’m not. Unexpected events are becoming the norm in our house, especially when it comes to Christmas.

“You did this?” I ask Ben. I want to hear it from him.

Ben leaves the room for a moment and comes back holding one of the six cups from the gift givers, filled with orange juice.

“They’ve been trying to help us through Christmas. My attitude has been … sort of … undermining their efforts,” he says. “Next year, we can all put the lights on the tree together. This time, I needed it to be just me and Dad.”

I nod an affirmative to Ben and take deep breaths so I don’t cry.

“Don’t you go getting another cold,” Megan says. “It’s way too close to Christmas.”

“Do you like the tree by the picture window, instead of downstairs in the family room like always?” Ben asks. “I think it makes the house merrier from the outside.”

“When did my kids get so smart?” I ask myself, then to Ben, “Good job.

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