And Then What Happened?: The best gifts of all

NAN PARATI
Published: 12-23-2024 11:37 AM |
I came up with a good cartoon this morning.
The first panel is set in 1994. Two young women (with big hair) are wandering around a department store. One says, “I love shopping,” and the other says, “Me too! You can never have too much cool stuff.”
The second panel is titled, “2024,” and the same two women, now 30 years older, are on the phone with each other saying, “Where’d all this stuff come from? And what am I gonna do with it?” The second one says, “What in the world were we thinking?”
The bigger question, perhaps, is who’s going to have to deal with it all, should we ever take up residence in some post-earthly space in the sky?
It was so much fun in those early days, shopping for who we wanted to become in life; the art for our walls, the furniture for our living spaces, buying many more sets of sheets than we needed in a lifetime just because they were pretty — and we wanted to impress our mates, whether present or potential ones. How many sets of dishes can one use in life? Anyone want a collection of beautiful, blue wine glasses? (I don’t even drink!)
While contemplating all of that this morning, I changed the sheets on my bed and swam though a lifetime of memories and relationships in the process.
The queen-size wooden frame that supports my sleep came from the inn I used to own here in Ashfield.
The mattress set was a gift from some friends I made shortly after moving here, after I’d lost all my furniture in Hurricane Katrina. Rick and Nancy knew I might need something comfortable to rest on, and boy is that an inviting place to land every night, even all these years in.
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The flannel sheets I pulled from my collection were a gift from my niece, a Christmas present she gave me just as she, herself entered the age of grown-up shopping. And, to this morning, I can still hear the voice of my first live-in boyfriend as he watched me make the bed one day and said, “Huh-uh. Turn the top sheet upside down so that when you fold it over at the pillow you’ll see the pattern and not the back of it.” I believe he rolled his eyes that he had to teach me something so obvious.
It’s cold here in Ashfield this time of year, so the bedcovers are layered in a many-splendored aggregate of warmth.
Layer one is the quilt my great-grandmother sewed back in the early 1900s.
Layer two is the flowery coverlet my parents bought for their bed in the happy, lucid late 1990s.
Layer three is the down comforter I bought as an exchange student in Germany in 1979. Being from the American South, I’d never seen a down comforter before; I didn’t even know they existed. I excitedly bought the thickest, warmest one I could find and, since I didn’t really need anything with that kind of heft in New Orleans, I found it packed high and dry in a closet after the hurricane floods hit my house there 35 years later.
Layer four is the bedspread I bought for my mother after she moved to the nursing home, remembering nothing but her deepest connections by then. She had always liked the color green, so I bought her a covering in two shades, hoping to link her to something comforting as she mused her way out of this world and into the next.
And then, to keep me company, I have four stuffed animals. My dad bought me one years ago to commemorate the wily chipmunk that got in my house and evaded capture all winter long until it was finally lured back outside by the following summer’s heat.
Two were gifts from my sister — a bunny rabbit that she sewed for me by hand as a kid, and a wide-eyed goat puppet that sings “The Lonely Goatherd” from “The Sound of Music” when you open and shut its little puppet mouth. What sister doesn’t love that reminder from the fun old days of 1965?
The fourth, a little stuffed puppy, was a gift from my brother to my mom in her last, dementia-filled years when silent cuddly things were a comfort to her, and thus, in her memory, to me now.
Now, how many of these happy keepsakes were bought in my energized shopping days? Not one of ’em. All that stuff is headed for Goodwill or to a tag sale next summer.
Youth! Why couldn’t we see rationality looming on the horizon all those years ago? Because it wouldn’t have been as much fun if we had.
Happy holidays to you. For me, they’ll be filled with memories, friends and no dang presents.
Nan Parati lives and works in Ashfield, where she found home and community following Hurricane Katrina. She can be reached at NanParati@aol.com.