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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Love stories / Romance
- Subject: Drama
- Published: 12/08/2015
The Best Gift
Born 1954, M, from St Louis Mo, United StatesI hate buying presents, its not the giving, I love to give but finding something you think the person you are buying for will really like, enjoy and if possible touch them. Buying for a wife is ten times harder, because if you get the wrong thing you are going to hear a bout it for a long time and even worse you can see it in the eyes they don’t like it and oh my God if they cry, you’re done.
Pam’s birthday is only a few days away and I have been searching high and low for just the right gift. I got her a blender a few years ago that I knew she wanted. Was that ever a bad deal, she cried and two hours and five days later while laying in bed she said in a whisper, as if someone was around to hear, “never give a girl, especially a wife or lover any thing for the kitchen. You are saying we are good for nothing but cooking, and never ever give them any thing like a vacuum cleaner and say they are just your maids. I tell you this so you won’t tell your next wife or lover just how you think of them.” Now that made me feel like a little bug and worse one caught out in the open and to slow to get away before firmly stomped on by some big foot, and that is how I felt stomped on and smashed. I took her in my arms and explained I loved her more then life and death and as a stupid male I thought she would know that by getting her something I knew she wanted. After all us guys break out in a rash of smiles when a wife gets us a tool we been dying to get. And cringe when we see a new shirt or pants, we like tools and tech toys and even a great book but clothes is like saying, you idiot you don’t know how to dress and I have to dress you like a baby.
Now I might be a slow learner but I assure you when you are made to feel like the lowest of low in life you don’t make the same mistake again. Worse I asked her, “Pammy baby, what would you love to have you don’t have now.” She looked at me with those deep brown eyes and smile on her lips, arms went around my neck, “what more could a woman want when she has you.” Now what’s a guy to do, wrap my self up naked and have a friend carry me in and give myself to her. That thought indeed was something I thought on but decided I didn’t know anyone big enough who could carry me and besides be my luck she might get that look in those eyes again and cry.
I ruled out jewelry because I was always getting her some nice ring, bracelet or necklace, I just got her a red diamond heart a few days ago, before that a blue diamond buckle ring, a month ago a morganatic ring. I still had many more to get her, like a yellow diamond was next on the list but she already was a walking jewelry store, She had rubies, quartz, peals, tanzanite, topaz, chrome, and some so rare I couldn’t even say the names. So buying a new ring was going to make her smile but was not something that would touch her. I loved to buy Pam presents when not on special occasions because she was like a little girl when you gave her a gift her face would light up and she would smile and look like she must have when she was five or six years old. Yet if it was Christmas or a birthday it had to be right.
I had spent the day going from flea markets and antique shops to fine custom stores and was about to give up when I saw on the side of the road a sign that said, “One Of A Kind, Antiques,” I made a hard right turn and drove down the street. It was not the kind of place I wanted to be in, the buildings were falling down, and a gang had painted messages on every wall. Soon the building began to be a memory in the background and the road became narrow and soon the black top was gone and I was on a very narrow old dirt road. I had lived in this city a good many years and didn’t even know such a road could exist in the city any more.
I was at the point of thinking of going back and just looking for a place to turn around when I saw the old building. It was one of those very old country type stores, wood porch, one big plate window with signs hanging in it, sale, and get the perfect gift, we are looking for you. The four steps leading to the porch were old and the building looked as it had never been painted but was the old gray of aged wood, the screen door going in to the store was that of a old wood frame and long ago rusted screen wire. There were only a few parking places all empty and not a soul anywhere to be seen. I thought as I climbed out that I had no doubt driven all the way out to this place that looked like the entrance to some demons paradise to find the shop closed. Even with that thought rolling around in my almost empty head I still found my self pulling the screen door, it opened and I jumped about two feet off the floor as a black cat let out a screech and ran through my legs.
A old lady sat in an old wood rocking chair inside the door, a corn cob pipe in her mouth, her gray hair in a old fashioned, huge bun, her dress you could see was long and covered with faded flowers, than it hit me it was what when we kids we had known as a flour sack dress. She didn’t bother to get up just rocked and smiled her toothless smile at me, “Welcome Rob, take you’re time I am sure you will find what will touch Pam’s heart here.” “Thank you” I said, “how did you know who I am and who Pam is or what I’m doing even?” She smiled rocked in perfect four, four timing, “just call me granny and I had a vision that is how.” I wanted to ask more but she just let out a big puff of smoke and laid her head back as if asleep. She would have reminded me of my own grandmother if she did not smoke that pipe.
I began to walk through the tight isles of the store. There were tables after table each stacked almost full with items. I saw a doll house and went to it, now me, I would love to get a set of cowboy pistols like we had when a boy, or some of the really old GI Joes, or a old Tonka Truck, but would Pam like a doll house or think I was silly. I jumped the old lady stood behind me, “that is the doll house she got for Christmas when she was six years old.” I said, “What, how do you know?” She smiled, “I know lots of things, everything you see in this store is a memory for Pam and you will be sent here when the time comes and store will be filled with your old Tonka trucks and gun holster sets.” I didn’t know if to keep looking or run as fast I could, but I was here and seems I did remember seeing some of the things in her pictures growing up.
I saw a beautiful doll in green dress with golden hair, next to that a tea set, and there were dresses and hairpins, and purses that looked to be covered in glitter, I realized things from when she must have been born to now. Wait till now, sure enough there was the ring I had just ordered her and it had not even arrived yet. I couldn’t help myself I felt a shiver and I shook so hard I thought my teeth would rattle loud enough to be heard. Then my eyes saw it. I knew it was what I had to buy, I walked to it, fear forgotten, my eyes misted up, I knew this thing would move her like nothing else in the world. It had long been gone, but I remembered it from when we were dating, twenty-five years ago. She often would point to it and say how I love them.
Her parents had passed five years after we were married. It was in the middle of the night when a knock came on our door and a policemen was there saying “can I come in you two might want to sit down.” Seems a fire of unknown origin had broken out in the old frame house and burnt to the ground, no one or anything survived. It had been a hard time for Pam as it would be for anyone; her family had always been close and now to lose them all, her mom and pop and younger sister and brother in one sweep. Now here I stood in this shop with all her memories. I was not going to question the why or the how any more because I knew by this one thing it was true. Rather God and a host of angels or the devil and legion of demons put this place here, it was all Pam.
I found myself touching clothes that she had once worn, or least one’s like them, the baby doll with black slippers, the cotton white panties with butterflies, the dark blue dress with white frilly lace around the bottom. Then I saw her wedding dress, a simple white dress, that had went to just below her knees and cut low enough to see a bit of cleavage, I thought back to how she fussed about how her mother had not got the seams straight along the bottom. I reached out and touched it, and my mind; no I think maybe my whole body was back at our wedding.
I was standing at the front of the country church, the preacher was behind the pulpit and I was staring up the isle and the wedding march was being played, sometimes with a wrong note, and there she was Pam, walking down the isle toward me. I could see her smile, the slight tear in corner of her eye as she came near me. I was reaching out my hand and felt her hand come into mine, ……… when a cold hand touched me and I dropped the dress from my fingers and there stood the old lady. That toothless smile, “it was a beautiful wedding wasn’t it.” Then she walked away.
They always wanted a baby but something was wrong and Pam and she could not have one but as he held her baby dress he could see her, she was so cute even then. He noticed that some things don’t really change in time. There is a certain beauty that caries on from birth.
I heard the old woman say “time to get it and time to go I have other places I need to be and things to do.” I didn’t want to leave this magic place, but took the item and asked the price. She looked and said, “You could not afford its true value, just give me hundred dollars and a promise.” I said yes to the money but I stopped and stood very still, “what kind of promise?” She smiled that toothless smile; “the promise is not to me but to her and you will know it when the time comes.” With that she wrapped it up and I carried it to the car, after a bit of struggling I got it in the back seat. As I drove back up the road I realized I had been in the store a very long time because when I went in the sun was going down, now it was coming up. Today was Pam’s birthday. I decided to go back and get the wedding dress too if she would take my credit card. I made a U turn and started back but the road only went back five hundred feet and then it was just thick woods, no road, I U turned again and headed home, soon I was in the city again passing the old buildings, but my mind was not on those things but on where had I been, how was I going to explain this, would anyone ever believe me? I looked in back seat the present was there so I could not have been dreaming.
I got home, slipped in and set the present on the couch, and slipped through the house, got naked and slipped in bed next to Pam, pulled up against her warm naked flesh and thought how happy I am, she is just as beautiful as the day we met.
Next thing I knew she was waking me up, a smile on her face as she kissed me, “you going to sleep all day.” She was sliding out of bed and I watched her, I watched her slip on a robe and realized I felt rested and yet I had not been in bed but an hour. What if all had been a dream, what if she walks in the living room and there is not a present. I started to panic. I jumped up and slipped my clothes on and followed her down the hall to the living room.
There it was sitting on the couch its bright gold paper with little dolls in pink all over it. She let out a sound not a yell but a excited verbal sound then, “Oh my gosh that looks just like the paper grandma used to wrap my presents in, where did you ever find paper like that?” then she had the present in her hand taking the paper off with the careful precession of a surgeon.
Her eyes got big as the paper rolled away, tears filled her eyes, but not bad tears for there was smile a longing, a look of such love and affection, my own eyes teared up.
She held it up and looked at it, tears making her face shine in the morning sunlight coming through the window. I could hardly speak as I said; “I thought you could hang it above the couch like it used to hang in your house when you grew up.” She said in broken words, “Oh yes, it is the picture of my most favorite place in the world, look, here is grandma on the porch in that old rocking chair,” I looked close for the first time, I noticed in her hand was a corn cob pipe. “Look here is grandpa in that old broken down straw hat and he always wore those old overalls, and the little girl sitting on the step leaning up against grandma’s leg is me.” “How did you get this picture, oh where could you of got it, oh never mind, it is the most wonderful present ever.” With that she sat it down and pulled me to her and I felt the warmest sweetest kiss I every had in my life.
“Promise me that will be us someday, together when old and still in love, promise me.” The price had been a hundred dollars and a promise; I knew this was the final payment for the picture. I held her close and said, “Should I go now and buy you a corn cob pipe or can I wait a bit? I promise to love you till the angels separate us and we meet again on the golden shore of life forever more.”
Now I stand fifteen years later in the cold dark room looking down on her wrinkled face remembering that birthday, knowing that in a few minutes the angles were going to carry her up to that shore without me. I cried not because she was going but because she was going without me and I would have to wait to see her. I had kept that promise, when I retired we had even bought a small farm and built a house as close to that old house as we could, the picture still hung above the couch and out on the porch were two old rocking chairs that we often sit in and watched the sun say good night to us and would often be there to watch it say good morning. Her eyes opened and somehow I knew this would be the last time. Those eyes still held a sparkle, and she was still the most beautiful woman in the world to me. I said, “Pammy I know you can’t speak but your eyes say it all, when you get there keep looking for me I won’t be long coming to be with you, and maybe you can take this with you.” I placed in her hand, a old hand made corn cob pipe, it was made as best as I could to be just like the one in the picture. Her hands closed over it, a smile reached her lips and her eyes closed.
I stand here crying remembering and just wanting to go with her, Pam wait for me.
The Best Gift(Rich Puckett)
I hate buying presents, its not the giving, I love to give but finding something you think the person you are buying for will really like, enjoy and if possible touch them. Buying for a wife is ten times harder, because if you get the wrong thing you are going to hear a bout it for a long time and even worse you can see it in the eyes they don’t like it and oh my God if they cry, you’re done.
Pam’s birthday is only a few days away and I have been searching high and low for just the right gift. I got her a blender a few years ago that I knew she wanted. Was that ever a bad deal, she cried and two hours and five days later while laying in bed she said in a whisper, as if someone was around to hear, “never give a girl, especially a wife or lover any thing for the kitchen. You are saying we are good for nothing but cooking, and never ever give them any thing like a vacuum cleaner and say they are just your maids. I tell you this so you won’t tell your next wife or lover just how you think of them.” Now that made me feel like a little bug and worse one caught out in the open and to slow to get away before firmly stomped on by some big foot, and that is how I felt stomped on and smashed. I took her in my arms and explained I loved her more then life and death and as a stupid male I thought she would know that by getting her something I knew she wanted. After all us guys break out in a rash of smiles when a wife gets us a tool we been dying to get. And cringe when we see a new shirt or pants, we like tools and tech toys and even a great book but clothes is like saying, you idiot you don’t know how to dress and I have to dress you like a baby.
Now I might be a slow learner but I assure you when you are made to feel like the lowest of low in life you don’t make the same mistake again. Worse I asked her, “Pammy baby, what would you love to have you don’t have now.” She looked at me with those deep brown eyes and smile on her lips, arms went around my neck, “what more could a woman want when she has you.” Now what’s a guy to do, wrap my self up naked and have a friend carry me in and give myself to her. That thought indeed was something I thought on but decided I didn’t know anyone big enough who could carry me and besides be my luck she might get that look in those eyes again and cry.
I ruled out jewelry because I was always getting her some nice ring, bracelet or necklace, I just got her a red diamond heart a few days ago, before that a blue diamond buckle ring, a month ago a morganatic ring. I still had many more to get her, like a yellow diamond was next on the list but she already was a walking jewelry store, She had rubies, quartz, peals, tanzanite, topaz, chrome, and some so rare I couldn’t even say the names. So buying a new ring was going to make her smile but was not something that would touch her. I loved to buy Pam presents when not on special occasions because she was like a little girl when you gave her a gift her face would light up and she would smile and look like she must have when she was five or six years old. Yet if it was Christmas or a birthday it had to be right.
I had spent the day going from flea markets and antique shops to fine custom stores and was about to give up when I saw on the side of the road a sign that said, “One Of A Kind, Antiques,” I made a hard right turn and drove down the street. It was not the kind of place I wanted to be in, the buildings were falling down, and a gang had painted messages on every wall. Soon the building began to be a memory in the background and the road became narrow and soon the black top was gone and I was on a very narrow old dirt road. I had lived in this city a good many years and didn’t even know such a road could exist in the city any more.
I was at the point of thinking of going back and just looking for a place to turn around when I saw the old building. It was one of those very old country type stores, wood porch, one big plate window with signs hanging in it, sale, and get the perfect gift, we are looking for you. The four steps leading to the porch were old and the building looked as it had never been painted but was the old gray of aged wood, the screen door going in to the store was that of a old wood frame and long ago rusted screen wire. There were only a few parking places all empty and not a soul anywhere to be seen. I thought as I climbed out that I had no doubt driven all the way out to this place that looked like the entrance to some demons paradise to find the shop closed. Even with that thought rolling around in my almost empty head I still found my self pulling the screen door, it opened and I jumped about two feet off the floor as a black cat let out a screech and ran through my legs.
A old lady sat in an old wood rocking chair inside the door, a corn cob pipe in her mouth, her gray hair in a old fashioned, huge bun, her dress you could see was long and covered with faded flowers, than it hit me it was what when we kids we had known as a flour sack dress. She didn’t bother to get up just rocked and smiled her toothless smile at me, “Welcome Rob, take you’re time I am sure you will find what will touch Pam’s heart here.” “Thank you” I said, “how did you know who I am and who Pam is or what I’m doing even?” She smiled rocked in perfect four, four timing, “just call me granny and I had a vision that is how.” I wanted to ask more but she just let out a big puff of smoke and laid her head back as if asleep. She would have reminded me of my own grandmother if she did not smoke that pipe.
I began to walk through the tight isles of the store. There were tables after table each stacked almost full with items. I saw a doll house and went to it, now me, I would love to get a set of cowboy pistols like we had when a boy, or some of the really old GI Joes, or a old Tonka Truck, but would Pam like a doll house or think I was silly. I jumped the old lady stood behind me, “that is the doll house she got for Christmas when she was six years old.” I said, “What, how do you know?” She smiled, “I know lots of things, everything you see in this store is a memory for Pam and you will be sent here when the time comes and store will be filled with your old Tonka trucks and gun holster sets.” I didn’t know if to keep looking or run as fast I could, but I was here and seems I did remember seeing some of the things in her pictures growing up.
I saw a beautiful doll in green dress with golden hair, next to that a tea set, and there were dresses and hairpins, and purses that looked to be covered in glitter, I realized things from when she must have been born to now. Wait till now, sure enough there was the ring I had just ordered her and it had not even arrived yet. I couldn’t help myself I felt a shiver and I shook so hard I thought my teeth would rattle loud enough to be heard. Then my eyes saw it. I knew it was what I had to buy, I walked to it, fear forgotten, my eyes misted up, I knew this thing would move her like nothing else in the world. It had long been gone, but I remembered it from when we were dating, twenty-five years ago. She often would point to it and say how I love them.
Her parents had passed five years after we were married. It was in the middle of the night when a knock came on our door and a policemen was there saying “can I come in you two might want to sit down.” Seems a fire of unknown origin had broken out in the old frame house and burnt to the ground, no one or anything survived. It had been a hard time for Pam as it would be for anyone; her family had always been close and now to lose them all, her mom and pop and younger sister and brother in one sweep. Now here I stood in this shop with all her memories. I was not going to question the why or the how any more because I knew by this one thing it was true. Rather God and a host of angels or the devil and legion of demons put this place here, it was all Pam.
I found myself touching clothes that she had once worn, or least one’s like them, the baby doll with black slippers, the cotton white panties with butterflies, the dark blue dress with white frilly lace around the bottom. Then I saw her wedding dress, a simple white dress, that had went to just below her knees and cut low enough to see a bit of cleavage, I thought back to how she fussed about how her mother had not got the seams straight along the bottom. I reached out and touched it, and my mind; no I think maybe my whole body was back at our wedding.
I was standing at the front of the country church, the preacher was behind the pulpit and I was staring up the isle and the wedding march was being played, sometimes with a wrong note, and there she was Pam, walking down the isle toward me. I could see her smile, the slight tear in corner of her eye as she came near me. I was reaching out my hand and felt her hand come into mine, ……… when a cold hand touched me and I dropped the dress from my fingers and there stood the old lady. That toothless smile, “it was a beautiful wedding wasn’t it.” Then she walked away.
They always wanted a baby but something was wrong and Pam and she could not have one but as he held her baby dress he could see her, she was so cute even then. He noticed that some things don’t really change in time. There is a certain beauty that caries on from birth.
I heard the old woman say “time to get it and time to go I have other places I need to be and things to do.” I didn’t want to leave this magic place, but took the item and asked the price. She looked and said, “You could not afford its true value, just give me hundred dollars and a promise.” I said yes to the money but I stopped and stood very still, “what kind of promise?” She smiled that toothless smile; “the promise is not to me but to her and you will know it when the time comes.” With that she wrapped it up and I carried it to the car, after a bit of struggling I got it in the back seat. As I drove back up the road I realized I had been in the store a very long time because when I went in the sun was going down, now it was coming up. Today was Pam’s birthday. I decided to go back and get the wedding dress too if she would take my credit card. I made a U turn and started back but the road only went back five hundred feet and then it was just thick woods, no road, I U turned again and headed home, soon I was in the city again passing the old buildings, but my mind was not on those things but on where had I been, how was I going to explain this, would anyone ever believe me? I looked in back seat the present was there so I could not have been dreaming.
I got home, slipped in and set the present on the couch, and slipped through the house, got naked and slipped in bed next to Pam, pulled up against her warm naked flesh and thought how happy I am, she is just as beautiful as the day we met.
Next thing I knew she was waking me up, a smile on her face as she kissed me, “you going to sleep all day.” She was sliding out of bed and I watched her, I watched her slip on a robe and realized I felt rested and yet I had not been in bed but an hour. What if all had been a dream, what if she walks in the living room and there is not a present. I started to panic. I jumped up and slipped my clothes on and followed her down the hall to the living room.
There it was sitting on the couch its bright gold paper with little dolls in pink all over it. She let out a sound not a yell but a excited verbal sound then, “Oh my gosh that looks just like the paper grandma used to wrap my presents in, where did you ever find paper like that?” then she had the present in her hand taking the paper off with the careful precession of a surgeon.
Her eyes got big as the paper rolled away, tears filled her eyes, but not bad tears for there was smile a longing, a look of such love and affection, my own eyes teared up.
She held it up and looked at it, tears making her face shine in the morning sunlight coming through the window. I could hardly speak as I said; “I thought you could hang it above the couch like it used to hang in your house when you grew up.” She said in broken words, “Oh yes, it is the picture of my most favorite place in the world, look, here is grandma on the porch in that old rocking chair,” I looked close for the first time, I noticed in her hand was a corn cob pipe. “Look here is grandpa in that old broken down straw hat and he always wore those old overalls, and the little girl sitting on the step leaning up against grandma’s leg is me.” “How did you get this picture, oh where could you of got it, oh never mind, it is the most wonderful present ever.” With that she sat it down and pulled me to her and I felt the warmest sweetest kiss I every had in my life.
“Promise me that will be us someday, together when old and still in love, promise me.” The price had been a hundred dollars and a promise; I knew this was the final payment for the picture. I held her close and said, “Should I go now and buy you a corn cob pipe or can I wait a bit? I promise to love you till the angels separate us and we meet again on the golden shore of life forever more.”
Now I stand fifteen years later in the cold dark room looking down on her wrinkled face remembering that birthday, knowing that in a few minutes the angles were going to carry her up to that shore without me. I cried not because she was going but because she was going without me and I would have to wait to see her. I had kept that promise, when I retired we had even bought a small farm and built a house as close to that old house as we could, the picture still hung above the couch and out on the porch were two old rocking chairs that we often sit in and watched the sun say good night to us and would often be there to watch it say good morning. Her eyes opened and somehow I knew this would be the last time. Those eyes still held a sparkle, and she was still the most beautiful woman in the world to me. I said, “Pammy I know you can’t speak but your eyes say it all, when you get there keep looking for me I won’t be long coming to be with you, and maybe you can take this with you.” I placed in her hand, a old hand made corn cob pipe, it was made as best as I could to be just like the one in the picture. Her hands closed over it, a smile reached her lips and her eyes closed.
I stand here crying remembering and just wanting to go with her, Pam wait for me.
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