Member-only story
HUMOR
Gifts That Keep On Giving
Some things should stay in the closet
It’s pink and delicate, glistening in the lamplight that’s casting a warm glow over my half of the bedroom. Ridged and smooth in turns, the kind of attention to detail that demands a second look, but I have no use for it.
I set the bracelet aside with a giggle, and reach into the box for the next gaudy treasure.
My octogenarian aunt got into jewelry crafting sometime around her 76th birthday, when she enthusiastically ripped into a Christmas gift intended for one of my family’s pre-teens and her eyes lit up so brightly that none of us had the heart to tell her it wasn’t hers to keep.
Turns out there’s considerable overlap between what excites a ten year old and what delights someone nearly eight times her age. That unintentional gift set off a domino effect of awkward Christmas mornings that would continue for the next ten years.
Anybody who knows me, even peripherally, would take it as a given that I’m not the kind of girl that can be accessorized in glittery pastels, but my aunt — willful woman that she was — chose to ignore all the glaring signs in favor of a palette she deemed more acceptable than my closet full of identical black t-shirts.
