Gifted

Every week when Lindsay came home from the grocery store she’d find a special treat in her brown paper grocery sacks, a gift from the flirtatious bag boy who seemed to have a crush on her.  The first week it was a package of Hostess pink snowballs, two round chocolate cakes with cream filing covered in a spongey coconut topping.  The following week it was a ten-ounce bag of those crunchy Hawaiian potato chips, the kind Lindsay loved but never bought because they were so salty and greasy.  The week after that there was a small canned ham, an import from Denmark.  There were candied apricots wrapped in cellophane, Jordan Almonds in a round red tin, and a four-foot tall blooming hydrangea bush.  Then came a litter of three calico kittens, a German Shepherd puppy with a jeweled collar, a double rainbow, an ocean wave, and—just before Christmas—the Archangel Gabriel, who told her he’d be pleased to spend the holidays with her as it would afford him a relaxing respite since he was scheduled for continuing annunciations beginning in mid-February.  Ever practical, Lindsay put him to work walking the German Shepherd and cleaning the calicos’ litter box.

 Lindsay sat up late with Gabriel night after night between Christmas and New Year, eating Christmas cookies, drinking egg nog spiked with bourbon, and commiserating about their non-existent love lives.  The bag boy, she told him, was a lanky young man, blonde with broad shoulders.  He was a night surfer, a long-distance runner, an English major, a boy still enamored with Jack Kerouac and Hunter Thompson.  Gabriel agreed she must stop accepting gifts from this boy; he was completely unsuitable as a suitor, too young, too immature.  “But wait a minute,” Gabriel said on New Year’s Eve, “are you sure all these things are coming from him?”

“He’s the only one handling my purchases,” Lindsay insisted.  “Where else would they come from?”

Gabriel pet the smallest of the kittens.  “You create your own luck,” he pontificated.  “What you focus on will grow.”

Lindsay took another slug of bourbon sans egg nog.  “Oo-kay,” she said with a practiced eye roll.

“Fine,” he said laughing.  “Don’t believe me.  But life wants to serve you.  Follow the energy and it will lead you to what you want.”

Lindsay looked him square in the eye.  “What if I want you?  What if I’ve fallen in love with you?”

“I am only a mirror,” Gabriel replied softly, as he handed her the kitten.  “What you love in me is within you too.”

Just before dawn they took the puppy for a walk.  At the confluence of two rivers, Gabriel bid her farewell, melting into the crisp air.  Lindsay stood alone with her dog on the levee watching the water coursing under a sky streaked with yellow and pink.  She realized quite suddenly with surprise that she was happy.

Photo by Maria Lin Kim on Unsplash