Early Gifts

When Collette and Puck arrived at the house that morning, signs were plastered to the doorways.
“NO FOOD OR DRINK BEYOND THIS POINT”
“Dad was pretty livid last night,” said Mom. “Hot chocolate was spilled all over his important papers on his nightstand yesterday. So, that’s why there’re signs everywhere.”
Carrie, however, had made her own “loophole” signs, directing family members out the back door, and around the house to the front, in order to get food from the kitchen to the living room. She taped them up with a snicker.
Later in the kitchen, while Linnea shared an orange with Puck, the conversation centered on journals.
“Carrie read enough of my journal back in the day without permission,” Collette said.
“I did,” Carrie said, shamelessly. “And Rose has been into mine before.”
“So have I,” said Linnea.
“What?!”
“Well, Rose was reading it, so I thought it was OK.”
“It was not OK. I sat on her and punched her in the nose.”
Linnea laughed, and got down to business – helping Puck conduct a flour-fest in his high chair. He was soon covered in white dust.
For the next several hours, Collette, Carrie, Linnea, and Puck drove out to spend the day at Grandma Combs’. (Mom was busy preparing her room for a new paint job.)
Grandma already had a stack of boxes wrapped in white paper for Carrie’s early birthday presents. So while Puck snacked on a Nutrigrain bar in the kitchen and stared at Grandma’s lit lighthouse, Carrie began to unwrap.
Once again, the jackpot – a striped bag from Kenya, three bottled teas, a clear glass tea cup and saucer, two glass tea pots, and several boxes of flowering teas. Then came the final gift – one of the more bizarre items Carrie had ever received. Grandma was already laughing before she had it out of the box, which she had tightly taped down.
“Man, Grandma,” said Carrie. “Getting into your gifts is like trying to break into Fort Knox.”
Once in, Carrie removed the apparatus. A board labeled with various parts of the body, each label directed to a colored portion of two painted feet. Attached to the board with large springs were two foot-shaped boards with pegs of various lengths. It was a sort of foot massage machine, pointing out the different parts of the foot that could be rubbed against the pegs to remedy different parts of the body, inside and out.
“You really know how to pick ’em, Grandma,” Carrie laughed. “It kind of reminds me of an old carnival game or something.”
Next came Cracker Barrel. Grandma was certain that Collette would order her standard grilled cheese, but was fooled when Carrie ordered the grilled cheese with bacon, and Collette, the French toast. Puck was being funny and wouldn’t eat his macaroni and cheese, but was more than willing to eat morsels off of everyone else’s plates. This included half a cornbread muffin, but not until Carrie told him that it was a “cookie”. Then, he took the muffin in his chubby paws and grinned mischievously to himself, as though he were getting away with something.
After the first corn muffin, Grandma sliced another one in half and handed him a half. Puck knew something was wrong, and asked for the second half with a “pease”. When Grandma handed it over, he tried to smash the two halves back together again with a big smile.
And, when Grandma insisted on paying for the meal, Carrie pulled a stunt behind her back, and slipped off to pay the bill when she wasn’t looking.
“Tricked! I was tricked!” Grandma exclaimed.
Before they dropped off Grandma at her apartment, she brought out Puck’s very early birthday gift – a set of “construction utensils” – yellow rubber bulldozer-like spoon, fork, and “shoveler”. Puck thought this was very nice, and held them all the way home, until he conked into dreamland on 370, utensils in hand.
And somewhere during the lunch hour, Grandma had let it slip – the President Elect of the United States. It was little surprise to Collette. But it was difficult to believe that Collette would be nearing 30 by the time the next election rolled around.