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Forks When the time finally came, I knew which gift I was going for first. I had been studying them all for weeks and knew the rattle of every box. The tall one covered in reindeers had something inside which thumped awkwardly against the thick cardboard and teetered when I set it back down beside the tree. The gold bag hushed as its insides shifted; I suspected clothing was within, and all I wanted to do was dig through the tissue to see if I was right. But the green paisley box with a card from my Nonie clanked — clanked like the racks of an Easy-Bake-Oven. Christmas morning, I jumped over the toy train and seized the green gift. With the present finally before me, I paused. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed to Santa for an Easy-Bake. But when I tore into the box, when I threw aside the lid and pushed away the cream tissue paper, what I found was silverware, silverware like the kind we ate with at dinner — six spoons, four forks, and two knives. “Two place settings!” Nonie squawked from under her helmet of white curls. “One for you, and one for your husband!” My husband? Who, Collin? The boy who squeezed the plastic watermelon beside my head, gushing the deflated air into my ears? I was a second grader at an all-girls school. My options were limited. “Each Christmas, I’ll give you another setting. Eventually, you’ll be able to entertain a whole table!” she said slicing her hand in the air to designate the various places at the table — the domestic grandmother’s version of air guitar. Nonie was a compact woman, an Italian rendition of a matryoshka nesting doll. Her stomach was round but hard, and she had short legs with defined calve muscles, which she restlessly wiggled when seated. At first, I was confused. But as my eyes alighted upon the bulbous roses crowning the teaspoon handle, I couldn’t think of anything more lovely. Their reality was exhilarating. “They’re gorg-e-ous, Nonie! Thank you, Thank you!” I said brandishing a fork and skipping about the living room. “I love the little roses. They’re soo cute!” “I bought two identical sets. One for you and one for your cousin, Linda. I gave Linda all of hers. God only knows what she did with them. She should be married by now. She’s a pretty girl, what’s wrong with her!” “Who picked these out?” my mother interrupted. “I did. Aren’t they pretty? Got them at Macy’s. I always hated those old spoons my mother picked out for me. You have them now, don’t you?” “The ones with cornflowers?” my mother asked. “Yeah, Ehk. Always hated those.” “These are just bea-u-tiful!” I sung, still skipping. There was actually little unwrapping to be done — certainly no tearing of paper. Nonie only wrapped the lids of boxes. The idea was that the gift box could then be reused and none of the paper wasted. The paisley paper on this particular box had been selected from a trunk full of saved paper clippings, some over 30 years old. The following Christmas I unlidded not my second installment, but a check for twenty-five bucks. “Buy yourself some ice cream,” Nonie said, pushing herself deeper into the couch, her size five feet dangling a couple inches above the ground. She had always insisted she was 5’2, but couldn’t have measured more than 4’9. “I’m too old to buy presents. This way, you get what’s right.”
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