“What do you say, Parker?” Jason prompted.
“Thank you,” he dutifully replied, but I could see from his expression that he wasn’t even remotely excited about my gift.
“It’s an airplane,” I said. “You have to build it. You might need your dad to help you. I thought you could build it together.”
He set the box down. “Open yours, Daddy!”
I could feel tiny flames of disappointment licking the edges of my mind. I had wanted Parker to be excited, but now that I saw him with the kit, I could see clearly that he was too young for it. He didn’t even understand what it was.
Jason began slowly unwrapping his gift, revealing a thin, white cardboard box. He lifted the lid, where a scrapbook was nestled underneath layers of cream-coloured tissue paper. I had chronicled our first few months together, leaving a slew of empty pages — for our future, I told him, holding his eyes with mine. I had been so sure, back then, that I knew what I wanted.
I was strangely nervous about opening the tiny box on my lap. I tried to peel the tape off carefully, not wanting to rip the paper underneath, but then sensing Parker’s impatience beside me, I tore the pretty wrapping off. I raised an eyebrow when I saw that I was holding a box from a jewelry store. As I lifted the hinged lid, my heart hammered erratically. I let out my breath when I saw a bracelet nestled on the box’s satin lining.
“Oh, Jason, it’s beautiful. I love it!” I leaned across the couch and kissed him, right in front of Parker.
WHEN WE GOT TO MY mom’s, she was bustling about like an excited hen. She took our coats and shooed us into the living room where she had the fireplace channel on the TV and Christmas music playing too loudly. There were two bowls on the coffee table: one filled with mixed nuts, the other with Smarties.
“Who wants some eggnog?” Mom asked.
“I’ll help,” I said, standing up again, but Mom motioned for me to sit.
“No, no,” she said. “You just enjoy yourself.”
When she rejoined us, with a tray of drinks in her hands, she had this silly grin on her face and it reminded me of the way she had looked at Ricky’s first wedding. Proud as a peacock. Maybe even a little smug. What had she expected for her children that these kinds of moments — generally quite normal — made her so happy?
She had prepared for this visit with the same attention to detail as when Ricky used to return for the holidays, first from Leeville and later from Toronto. The kitchen table was covered with the red and green checkered tablecloth and was already set for four with Mom’s wedding china. Two tapered candlesticks stood like sentinels on either side of her Christmas centrepiece: a glass bowl filled with floating candles and sprigs of holly.
“It smells great in here,” I said, inhaling the rich scent of poultry and gravy as my mom opened the oven to baste the turkey.
“I have a little something for Parker,” Mom said, straightening up. “Shall we open that now? Dinner will be ready in an hour, and I’ll need to do some last-minute prep before then.”
As it turned out, she had a little something for each of us, even though she’d already given me a gift the day before. I didn’t have anything else for her, and I didn’t want Jason to feel awkward either about not having something to give Mom, but, as I was deciding what to say, Jason pulled a small package from beside his shoes, wrapped in silver paper, and graciously handed it to my mom.
When Mom saw the set of four intricately hand-carved coasters, each one representing a different biblical scene from the nativity story, she looked up, her eyes wide.
I reached out for a better look at the coasters. Each miniature scene had been etched with extraordinary precision: Mary riding on the donkey with Joseph at her side, under a sky of tiny sculpted stars; the shepherds with their sheep in the field, gazing at the new star in the east; the three wise men holding their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh; and, of course, the manger in the stable, with baby Jesus lying on a bed of straw, Mary and Joseph kneeling at his side.
It was obvious Mom loved the coasters. Her gift for Jason didn’t exactly have the same wow factor, but I could tell Jason was pleased enough with his new slippers. “She loves giving slippers,” I told him.
It was Parker’s gift, though, that left me wondering why I hadn’t had the foresight to think of it myself. While he had looked at the model airplane kit from me and set it aside with disinterest, he was clearly thrilled when he unwrapped Mom’s present: a box of Lego. He began playing with it immediately and I was reminded of my own sizable collection as a child. Where had all those bins gone? At some point when I was in high school, Mom had cleaned out Ricky’s room where I’d been storing my stuff and I supposed she had moved everything to the basement, or maybe she’d given it away. Seeing Parker sitting on the floor, absorbed by whatever he was building, I pictured him at my house, surrounded by my old bins of Lego, as content on my living room floor as I’d always been as a child in my room sorting through my collection. Somehow, watching Parker play with his new Lego kit made my own childhood seem less tainted.
“DON’T BE NERVOUS. MY parents will love you.”
“I’m not nervous,” I said. “How much do they know about me?”
Jason laughed. “Everything. At least everything I know.”
I kept my eyes trained on the road. We were
