Necklaces and Napkins

    Glistening snowflakes fall as lightly as our steps on the snowy sidewalks of the Crestview Hills Town Center. You have your phone with you in case we need to reach Mom. I’m not old enough for one of those yet. She dropped us off here a little over an hour ago for some last-minute Christmas shopping. I had only turned ten years old a mere nine hours ago, but I still feel like the most grown-up person in the world walking around without parents.

    Our bright, puffy winter jackets make us look like oversized, colorful penguins, but we both think it is the funniest thing ever. We waddle from shoppe to shoppe in our gear, searching for the most inconspicuously cheap Christmas gifts we can possibly find to give our parents and siblings. We aren’t thinking about saving money for the future – we are simply working with what saved up allowance and spare change we have in our coat pockets.

    The Michael Bublé cover of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” begins to play softly from the speakers hidden within festive holly bushes and ribbons atop the illuminating streetlights. Not loud enough to drown out our pointless conversations of who really could run to the other side of the outdoor mall faster, but strident enough to catch my attention. I love this song so much. I crane my head around on a swivel, looking for where the dreamy voice is emanating. I spot the well-hidden speakers lining the festively decorated storefronts playing the music and I freeze.

    My eyes shut as I let the moment fill my heart with the most comforting 

warmth I’d ever felt – a warmth powerful enough to neutralize the biting winter air or the cool snowflakes landing softly on my rosy cheeks. I look up to the dark sky above me and take a tranquilizing deep breath of sharp, cold fresh air. But before I have any time to react, you take off as swiftly as your skinny legs can carry you down the snow-clad path. The only objective in your simple, eleven-year-old mind is to beat me in a high-speed race across the esplanade. I take off after you at an arguably quicker pace.

    Before I even reach the Dillard’s entrance where you are waiting for me with a smug grin across your face, I am already shouting spurious excuses about your early start and the slip hazard of the snow only on my side of the walkway. Eventually, I decide to give you a false sense of victory by giving in to your first-place finish…it is the season of giving after all. Besides, we have some more shopping to get done.

    I cannot recall all of the gifts we bought nearly 8 years ago. All of the random sports items for my brothers and the white t-shirts I’ve bought for my dad blend together over the years. But, in the midst of the countless futile gifts I have given as a child with a ten-dollar budget, one gift stuck with me that changed the way I feel both about myself and the world around me forever. It was the gift that I got Mom on that unforgettable December night with you.

    You get the call that Mom is on the way to come pick us up. I’m silently troubled by this news because she is the last person on my list that I need to get a gift for. You notice my unease and assure me that we still have plenty of time before she is going to arrive. We continue our walk down the town center, peeking into the windows of each and every storefront for something that she may like. Just as we are about to give in and return to where we were dropped off, my eyes fixate on a brightly lit store ahead of me.

    The store’s name, ALTAR’D STATE, sits atop a rustic facade on the corner of the street. I instantly grow enamored with the warm, inviting atmosphere of the shop and, with all possible haste, I make my way towards the wooden double door entrance. You follow behind me at a slower, obviously less determined pace. A toasty furnace greets us as we walk in, working hand-in-hand with the fairy lights strung above in creating a homely feeling to warm both our bodies and hearts.

    My eyes are instantly drawn to the revolving display cases of jewelry near the front counter. I make my way to the columns upon columns of alluring gold necklaces – ones with charms, diamonds, crosses, pearls, pendants, you name it. But as wonderfully unique each chain was from its neighbor; every single one brandished the same exorbitant price tag.

    You tell me that there is nothing here that I can afford and that we should just start heading back. Not being one to capitulate, I ignore you and continue my frantic search. After a couple more minutes, at the very last moment before you are going to physically drag me out of the store, I find it. The perfect gift for Mom. I don’t even bother to look at the price tag before immediately pulling it off the display case. The necklace is simple. It’s two modest, gold-plated chains – one consisting of an earth-tone pattern of blue, brown, and teal beads, and the other with just a few scattered gold beads on it. I don’t remember how I sensed it would be perfect for Mom, but I just did. Maybe it was the fact that the necklace was able to carry so much beauty and good while still remaining self-effacing and kind. Or maybe it was because I thought she would like the colors. I don’t know, I was ten.

    The cashier rings me up as I stand on the other side of the counter with you, practically shaking with excitement. The total is thirty dollars and some change, (which might as well be three hundred dollars for a jobless pre-adolescent like me) but I don’t care one bit. I don’t care that this was the most I’d ever spent on a Christmas gift. All I care about is seeing the look on Mom’s face when she opens her present on 

Christmas Day. I hand over to the cashier all of my remaining crumpled up bills from my coat pocket. Only twenty-eight bucks. It still isn’t enough. I turn to you and beg you to lend me a couple dollars. You begrudgingly agree and I’m finally able to pay off the pricey necklace. The lady at the register wraps it delicately and places it inside of a florid, festive gift bag.

    I walk out of the store with the biggest smile plastered across my face. I promise to pay you back for the money you lent me, and we start the trek over to meet Mom. I hide the necklace and the gift bag inside of another bag to make sure nobody bears witness to the gift before Mom. The snow is coming down harder now, and it feels like we are the only people on the streets. I look at you again. Your eyes are fixated on the ground, watching yourself make footprints on the snow-clad pavement beneath us. I follow behind you, attempting to mimic the pattern of your footsteps.

    We wander aimlessly in the night, searching for my mom’s car until we spot her black Chevrolet Suburban parked at the end of the front parking lot, in front of a local pizzeria. Before we even have a chance to climb into the heated car, though, she steps out of the driver’s side door and pops open the trunk. She instructs us to put our bags of gifts in the trunk and then tells us we are going to get pizza for dinner. As if this night couldn’t get any better.

    You and I follow Mom into Dewey’s Pizzeria, and the sharp aroma of melting cheese and baking pizza dough instantly hits our noses. I feel my mouth begin to salivate as I race over to the giant display window where we always watch the cooks make our pizzas. I arrive at the window and hop up on a chair to get the perfect view right as a 20-something with AirPods in begins tossing a sizable circle of raw pizza dough in the air. I follow its path up and down…up and down…up and down…as the pizza thrower glances directly at me and flashes me a bright smile. I’m starstruck by the talented confectioner and take my hands off the glass for a moment to wave hello. He gives me a nod back and continues kneading and prodding with a fresh batch of dough on the side table. I’m on top of the world feeling like the coolest 10-year-old to step into this establishment.

    I turn around to see if you saw this totally nonchalant interaction, but you are already seated with Mom at a window-view booth across the restaurant floor. I saunter over to the booth and take a seat next to you. Mom sits across from us with a suppressed grin on her face. I look over to you for an explanation, but you share the same schemeful expression as her. Both of you look right past me, and I whip my head around to see one of the only remaining employees working the closing shift approaching our booth. She is carrying a cup with something in it, but I can’t tell what it is from this distance. The young woman arrives at our table, glances directly at me, and utters the most tired “Happy Birthday” I’d ever heard in my life. She places the cup in front of me and walks away as briskly as she came.

    I look into the cup and see a couple napkins shoved haphazardly inside. I look to you and Mom for answers, but, at this point, you both are just as perplexed as I am. Mom explains that they thought I would be sung the Happy Birthday Song and given a free dessert or something. Nobody in a million years could have expected this random glass cup with napkins stuffed inside. I pull out the napkins to see what they are uncovering only to find the best gift I could have possibly asked for: absolutely nothing. I take one look at you before all three of us are doubled over in laughter. I am nearly crying with laughter and my now warmed-up eyes begin brimming with tears. I cannot stop smiling. And I don’t stop beaming during the entire ride home. I am so happy, and I don’t even know why. Usually when I’m this cheerful, it’s when I am playing laser tag with my friends or riding a roller coaster at Kings Island. But tonight, this joy I’m experiencing, a bliss unmatched by any other, feels different.

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    Knowing what I know now, I believe that was the first time I felt contentment. It felt like it was this romanticization of a mundane shopping experience that awakened a new part of my consciousness and showed me a glimpse of how happy I can truly be on this gorgeous, blue planet. I was shown how happy I can be if I spend my life giving to others and helping the people in my life experience the same joyous emotions I felt on the night of my tenth birthday. I developed an ability to be bewitched by nature and everyday life – and it is both a blessing and a curse. Even though I am able to find beauty in nearly anyone and anything, it's a lonely feeling perceiving the world in a completely different lens than everyone else. I long for someone who I can share my passionate ardor with; someone in whom I can share and revel in all of the secrets of the universe with. I’ve had people come and go from my life, some whom I’ve been able to offer quick peeks into the way I see the world, but none wishing to stay enough to stick by my side throughout the dark, snowy nights.

    I brought up to you once that this was the best day I’d ever had and, by the way you stared back at me, you’d think I turned green and grew horns. You don’t see the world the way I do, but you were still there next to me regardless. I long for someone to walk by my side again like you did that night at Crestview. I dream of being content again. I hope that one day someone can revel with me in the alluring nature of our existence. It’s a feeling that I have only seen in fleeting windows since that night, but I still hold hope that the sentiment of genuine satisfaction within myself can be possible once again.