Re-Gifting

Back at Christmastime, Housemate received a miniature teapot from a well-meaning co-worker.  The teapot was in a box, and was the kind of thing you might buy at a Hallmark shop.  It was too small for more than a cup or a cup and a half of tea.  It had pastel flowers on it, or maybe pastel bears.  It was one of the worst kind of Christmas gifts -- something the recipient doesn't value at all and can't use, and something the gifter spent some money on and obviously thought was tasteful and sweet.

We pondered the teapot for a while, not wanting it in the house but feeling guilty about getting rid of it.  And then we were walking one day and hit upon the perfect solution.  There's a little old lady who lives on the other corner of my block, in a rambly one-story house.  Her lot has huge trees on it, and a couple of brambly rosebushes, and is in that unattended state of disrepair that you see with old people's houses.  The little old lady who lives there rarely comes out.  In the six years I've been here I've only seen her a handful of times, wearing huge wraparound dark glasses and slowly making her way down the steps to get in a car with her kids.  There's a sunporch on the east side of the house that has shelves on the glass walls, crammed to the rim with trinkets: collectible coffee mugs, ceramic lighthouses, ashtrays, figurines, and, yes, teapots.  The side windows, covered with gauzy curtains, don't hide the fact that the whole house is full of these things.  Every windowsill has a line of vases or cups or mugs on it.   

So last December we wrapped that teapot back up in its box in Christmas paper, and in the dark stillness of Christmas morning I crept over to her house and left the present on her front steps, unsigned.  Sneaking back to my house, feeling sure she would find the box and be delighted by the teapot was a private happiness I had all day. 

Over the course of the winter our walks took us past her house plenty of times.  As we passed we kept an eye open for the teapot to appear on the racks of ceramic keepsakes on the sunporch.  There are so many that it was hard to know for sure whether it was there.  This morning, though, unmistakably, we saw it in the second window on the north side, in a place of honor by itself.  We stopped in the road and elbowed one another.  Take a look at that.  We high fived and walked the rest of the way home with big grins. 

Comments

random acts of kindness . . .

I hope coworker does not stop by your blog

[Scheherazade]

Ack. Now I feel mean! But I don't think she knows who I am, or that I have a blog, or would recognize this situation if she saw it. Although maybe she will. Still, isn't it nice to know that her gift is treasured, and brought us a happiness that will be renewed whenever we pass our neighbor's house?

[Jen14221]

What a lovely story.....