…The Gift..

12.22.2009

I was twelve. Signs of the holiday season were sprouting up all over the city. For reasons I can’t totally remember, my usual babysitting customers weren’t calling. Although I had always counted on the money I brought in from those jobs to get my mom something special, for the first time, I wanted to include J.D., a “special friend,” who lived down the block from me who I had met over the summer. He moved to the city from Atlanta and had this sort of quiet, southern charm that made me play with my hair whenever he smiled at me. Not yet 12 years old, but close enough, I guess you could call it my first nibble of Puppy Love, but the “bite” was just tender enough to consider possibly getting something for him. As fate would have it, the babysitting jobs were scarce before Christmas, which left me, after shopping for my mom and my Nana, with hardly enough to even get J.D. a card. I was feeling a bit embarrassed when he showed up at my house two days before Christmas with a small, gift-wrapped box that he removed from his coat pocket. My brain couldn’t design an excuse fast enough to hide the fact that I had simply ran out of cash to get him anything. As we stood in the middle of the living room (that it was J.D.’s first time inside my apartment), I tried to block his view of “my stuff,” but he spotted my piano and informed me that I had never mentioned anything about my “private talent.” Since I wasn’t quite at the level of confidence where I would just bust down the door, bum rush the nearest piano and just crank out some Mozart or Scott Joplin, I quietly confessed my almost secret passion. When J.D. asked if I wanted to wait until Christmas to open my gift, my reaction was almost instant as I assured him that I would have something for him by then as well. Shortly after J.D. left, I almost fell over a chair dizzy from the “little white lie” I’d just told him. I called my mom at work and told her my dilemma. She, in her infinite wisdom, solved my problem in less than the time it took to dial her office number. She suggested I come up with something special for him on the piano. OMG!! Create a song? For a boy? From Atlanta? Who liked Science Fiction? I looked at the piano and immediately ran out of the apartment to my friend Kat’s apartment down the hall. I told her my situation and she thought it was a great idea and would make an even greater gift. On Christmas morning before my mom got out of bed, I quietly opened J.D.’s gift. It was a charm bracelet with the planets of the solar system. I was knocked out with that feeling of “specialness” from my first “kind of boyfriend.” That night, after we returned from our visit with relatives, I sat at the piano and just stared at the piano keys trying to imagine and find the place in my head where the melody for J.D. was hiding. The next day, late in the afternoon, J.D. knocked on the door. Naturally, I was wearing his bracelet and gave him the shyest 'thank you' in the history of the world. He said something that made me play with my hair. From somewhere, I found the courage to invite him over to the piano. Without hesitation, he sat next to me. I thought I would feel uncomfortable as I began to play, but the movement of my fingers magically pushed melodies up from the belly of the piano. When I finished, J.D. looked at me, then at my hands, then back at me. He said that was the coolest thing anyone had ever given him. When he asked me the title of the music I had just played, I smiled and said, “the Gift.” May all your holiday memories be gifts of love, Alicia

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01.16.2010

…The Gift..

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