December 6, 2013
Friday

I don’t know what’s in the box, but I love it. Unopened gifts contain hope.

— Jarod Kintz, b. 1982
American author and t-shirt designer

Lynn has not lived in this house since 2006, a reality that it took both of the remaining residents some time to understand. At the end of her sophomore year in college, she moved from a dormitory to a townhouse near the campus, but not before dropping off some accoutrements that were more suitable for dorm life than for apartment life. When she graduated in 2008 she moved again, this time to a solo apartment. She also got a new car, and some items cleared from the old car and some left from undergraduate days also found their way here.

Because she has for the last seven years lived not more than about an hour away, it hasn’t been necessary for her to stay overnight here when she comes back for a wedding or another gathering of high school friends. As her bathroom fell into disuse, so did her bedroom, becoming a repository for books, bulky Christmas decorations, and partially assembled craft projects.

I started “mining” in there earlier this year, emptying the drawers of clothes she would never wear again and some bookshelves of CDs she will never listen to. Among the things I went through was a large bag full of stuffed animals. When she was here in November she went through them, naming the occasions on which she had acquired them. A Victoria’s Secret bear had commemorated the loss of her first tooth. Nuala from The Lion King had been the first toy she bought with her own money earned from dog walking. Some ducks (Lynn loves ducks) had been offerings from assorted hopeful suitors. Each one was put back in the bag for delivery to a community collection box, except, for reasons I don’t quite understand, a large frog with a bead inside that rolls around and makes something of a froggy sound. That has been saved for her future children.

Another large shopping bag was full of greeting cards, letters, and large bubble-wrap envelopes that had been sent by friends at other colleges, and some by me. One was from a friend who was at the College of William and Mary. It contained some food items and a small stuffed mouse in colonial garb labeled “Margaret the Millener.” I pitched the stale peanuts and empty trail mix cans, but put Margaret on my computer desk, beside Emily Chickenson. Another was a fairly nice wicker basket with some small bottles of bath gel and body lotion, still glued to a styrofoam block and the whole thing wrapped in plastic.

Most curious of all was a gift bag with a matching gift tag attached. It was filled with bath products, both smell-good stuff and associated scrubbies and bath gloves, all from a company called “April.” The tissue paper surrounding each item in the nest of shredded filler was still taped. This bag was definitely given to her before she met the young man named Matt April whom she later married. The tag, seen at left, is inscribed “Lynn, Thanks for all your help this summer. Jan.”

Lynn has no recollection now of who Jan is nor what Lynn might have helped her with in some unspecified summer. I tried some memory prompts. Was it a special program at the college fitness center, where Lynn worked? Something for field hockey, or freshman orientation? Un-uh. Nope. She can’t even recall anybody named Jan.

I’ve extended gifts like that myself, small tokens to a hostess, to the before-school care supervisor, the teenagers who were the aides in Lynn’s ballet class. I’ve wondered sometimes how many of these generic packages, suitable for almost anyone, were put in a closet and forgotten, or re-gifted, or discarded, even.

The bath products, despite their age, are unopened and probably still usable. Lynn didn’t want them, so I took them to a collection point for items used at the emergency shelters and halfway houses in the city. I added Jan’s name to my prayer mandela for Advent, and I thought about her this week as I went about some Christmas gift shopping for people I don’t know.

For many years I chose gift suggestions from my church’s Angel Gift tree that represented people like us — a man, a woman, and a girl child who went, in the years when this was an object lesson for Lynn, from a preschooler to a teenager. This year I chose gifts for people who represent the characters I have been working with closely — a couple with sons aged three and five. Shopping for little boys is out of my usual area of expertise. I got a pack of metal trucks, including a pickup, a horse trailer, and an off-road vehicle for the tag specifying “toy for toddler boy” and warm pants and top in Size 5-6, as requested for a boy.

Knowing Lynn as I do, I am sure she appreciated the gesture from Jan, had probably quite enjoyed whatever it was she did for her, and wrote her a thank-you note before she forgot who she was. The young family I shopped for won’t know where the gifts came from. But whatever happens to them, I will pray that all is well with them this year, and with Jan.