The Unexpected Gift

For over thirty years my husband and I have celebrated New Year's Eve with special friends who live in the Baltimore area. We get together, share meals and stories and exchange simple gifts. We watch the ball drop at midnight, toast the new year and finish off our celebration with Oysters Rockefeller on the 1st of January.

This year, however, was a little different. For the past few months our friends have been downsizing - clearing out their house in preparation for a move to a retirement community. It's a long process of sorting - what to keep, what to pass on to the children, what to throw out... They are doing it slowly and carefully and have talked about how difficult it is to clear out a house that they have lived in for 40 years.

Well, they appeared as usual on the 30th of December with suitcases, hors d'oeuvres, wine ...and a shopping bag overflowing with presents. What? We do the simple gift thing, I thought!

It was good to see them. We settled in around the Christmas tree and got caught up a bit. It was soon time to open gifts. They were very excited about this and began to distribute all the things they had brought with them.

As we opened the presents, the mystery was solved. It became apparent that they were sharing their treasures with us. Each gift was thoughtfully chosen and held memories for us as friends. There were books that they had read and thought we would like and framed photographs with special meaning for the four of us. We shared more stories...

Then there was a small package for me...I opened it and there was an envelop filled with photos of my son's wedding in 1995! Our friend said, "You probably don't need these, you must have dozens of them.. but I didn't want to just throw them out." I was overwhelmed - what she did not remember was that all of my son's wedding photos (and other photos, too) had been destroyed in a fire five years before!

This seemingly insignificant envelop held something more valuable than she could have imagined. This unexpected gift is a true treasure of our friendship and example of how something so trivial can hold awe-some meaning for me. That she chose to save the pictures was somewhat unusual, I thought, and that they were given as part of this particular celebration was lovely. I was weepy and overwhelmed to be holding these pictures.

Thank you, Shirley and Bob, for your friendship and shared history!

These amazing moments are there for us. My hope in 2017 is that I may recognize them, name them and share them.