So, about a week later, we’re at his sister Karen’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. Everything was going swimmingly, ya, that’s a good word, swimmingly. His family was all very nice. Of course, I’d already met his Mom and Dad spending time at their house. (Actually meeting them for the first time has dissolved from my memory.) Now I got to meet his older sister and her 6 kids. She had just had a baby about a week and a half before, and was now hosting Thanksgiving dinner at her house. Ya, that’s not intimidating. David’s other sister was in rehab at the time.
I held the baby and enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner. New for me, to have stuffing with nuts in it and things just slightly skewed from the traditional dinner I was used to and had never experienced with another family before. The little kids ran all over the house. This part was my element, having 7 younger siblings myself. It was all very family and holiday. David was sweet and I was happy.
Now, you can see that our holiday history was sort of hit and miss and of course we had the biggie right around the corner. “Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat.” My dad loved to sing this little ditty and remind me of the way I would sing it as a little girl. “Tristmas is toming, the doose is detting fat.” This year, I stressed about what to do with this semi-permanent boyfriend. I thought things were getting more serious, but I had thought that before. What do you get for the person you want to spend every minute for time and all eternity with? And what is he going to read into it? And what will he get me? (Not that he has to get me anything.) And what will it mean? I finally decided to get David a nice, brand-name sweatshirt. I put everything I felt about our relationship into the packaging. I picked out a nice, masculine, striped wrapping paper. I gently wrapped tissue around the article inside the crisp, square box. I lined up the stripes so that they matched perfectly, wrapped ribbon around, and attached a large bow. It was perfect.
One day, I came home from work at the local radio shack to find my beautiful present destroyed. The story was that my little brother had unwrapped the present because it was so pretty. (He was about 8. Something was fishy and I didn’t really buy it, but the parallels with my relationship were pretty eerie. I just hoped that this was not foreshadowing.
