365 Days (Part 2) | ✓

332. Records

332. Records: Go through your file box and pull out old receipts or records...write something inspired by what you find!

How about my memory box?

*

Weeks before my 18th birthday, my mom let slip that her gift to me started with the letter G. Like most young people who don't have the financial means to purchase most of the things that they want (I want notebooks, lots and lots of notebooks), I enjoy getting gifts. However, I wouldn't have been preoccupied with wondering what this mysterious G-- was if my mother hadn't made a big deal of it herself.

"Hm, I wonder what it could be," she would say, with her finger tapping her chin and her eyes twinkling at me.

So began the guessing game. "Is it a Samsumg Galaxy phone?" I tried.

She laughed. "You wish."

"A giraffe? A green sweater? A grow-your-own-garden kit?"

Finally, I stumbled upon the answer. "It's a gravy boat!"

"Could be." Mom shrugged.

I kept on, insisting it must be a gravy boat and that I had never before desired something as that smooth little container whose intent was to hold splendor. "I will own you soon," I would say to a random gravy boat in the store, running my hand along it in wistful longing.

If anything, I was sure my parents would buy me a gravy boat just for the running gag we had about them.

My eighteenth birthday came. My brother, Zachary, and my parents had arranged that I would be given 18 different birthday gifts, one for each year of my life, throughout the day. It was such a sweet idea, and the gifts were exactly what I liked: small, thoughtful, and inexpensive. I received lots of notebooks. That made me happy.

Then at the end of the day, came the "big one." I sat in the recliner and was told to close my eyes and hold out my hands. They all wore nervous smiles. "Here it comes!" I joked. "The gravy boat!" (Which had not appeared yet.)

A piece of paper was placed in my hands. I opened my eyed and looked at it. It was two tickets to a Rogers and Hammerstein production of Cinderella. A musical.

Of course I loved it. It was an excellent musical too, by the way. If only we all would burst into song whenever we had feelings!

After enthusing over the tickets and thanking them for a wondeful birthday, I turned to my mom and said, "None of this starts with a G!"

"Oh well--" she shrugged and said, "I kind of panicked when I said that."

Seven months later and I still don't have a gravy boat. Here's to one for Christmas.