On a fine Thursday morning, Maw instructed me to wrap up two clothes on sale. This was meant for the two children living across the street from us. The clothes were a pink, fuzzy wool-like sweater and a brown smaller one for the tyke.
I did just that — measuring the small boxes (from the One Dollar Store) lengthwise across the gift wraps, folding a precise, triangular width using the straightedges of the wrapper while holding the ‘middle’ part in place for a perfect cut, cutting the paper with the dull serrated edges of a butter knife as opposed to using a scissor, folding, taping, bowing and labeling well.
This went on for about an hour in a relaxed pace. The rain went on and on. The parakeets chirped on and on. Paw helped cook the meal as instructed and washed and cleaned the dishes; while Maw sewed the finishing touches to her clothes, which she will wear while dancing at the wedding.
I got dressed and hurriedly put on some ‘thong’ slippers. Out the front door I went, knowing that the bio-units were indoors. Their three vehicles were parked outside. Of course they were renting the place. But for how long is still unknown.
I rang the doorbell once and the guy answered. The older girl babbled intelligently while the little baby said ‘Hi’ in her mother’s arms. I cannot remember but they said a lot of proper greetings. The older couple was seated on their recliner sofa.
I asked how the older woman with crutches was doing. She said fine. Her husband was ninety degree to her right and directly in front of me. I know they are friendly because they would wave at us. And we would wave back.
As a matter of fact, they brought their two children over for Halloween. I barely remembered the older girls name and thought the younger was a boy. The former had brown eyes while the latter had piercing blue eyes.
Later that evening the couple and their two children came over and present to the three of us a basket of goodies. The basket was bright red in color and covered in thick cream-colored fabric with red, six-sided snowflakes as designs.
The contents were two jars of delicious pickled cheese and green olives. I don’t know what the green leaves were and thought they looked like spinach. There were tomatoes or pimentos, too.
Cookies of all sorts were wrapped in plastic cellophane — gingerbread, oatmeal and chocolate chips and my favorite lemon with green crystals sprinkled on top. I like the party colored sprinkles but anything sugary tastes good.
Then there was a very cute but small loaf of banana nut bread and chocolate fudge brownies. I was very delighted and felt blessed that such fine neighbors made these foods. I told them I would be the primary consumer of these goodies.
It’s true. I almost finished half the cookies on Christmas Day, about one of two jars worth of this pickled stuff and I still have to work my way to the bread and brownies.
Of course there is still the extra food brought over on Christmas Day by the husband to one of Maws’ friends. He left almost immediately. Truly, this season represented abundance, not of material goods but a cornucopia of food o’ plenty!
Now I truly know why I am meant to be big-boned: It is to hold my extra pounds that I put on during the holiday season. At this rate, I’ll never achieve the idealized skinny look of the rich. Meh!
Copyright © FVDF. All rights reserved.
Leave a Reply