When I finally take a breath, he looks at me and smiles.
“I guess some gifts are worth giving,” he says.
He extends a hand for me to shake. “My name is Charles.”
“I’m Jo. How about you help me unload some things from my trunk?”
Charles follows me over to the car. We unload bags from the basement first, then my bedroom. I save a Hello Kitty beach bag stuffed with a cornucopia of Megan’s outgrown girly apparel: fuzzy pink pajamas, skirts, a few sweaters, blue jeans, and basketball shorts. A bracelet-making kit that my daughter never opened, several stuffed animals, and a book on hair braiding stick out of the top.
The man looks at me and says, “Wow.”
“I’ve done some stupid things in my life, too,” I tell him.
“You don’t mind if I take these home?”
“I would mind if you didn’t.”
He stands rummaging through the bag, then stops and says, “Merry Christmas.”
For the first time this holiday season, I say the same.
“Merry Christmas, Charles.”
The words feel right.
***
When I return home, the house is empty. I go down to the basement, look in the bedrooms. Not a creature is stirring.
I check the garage. The engine on Ben’s car is cold, so I go back into the house and punch his cell number into my phone. I hear it ringing faintly, then the clatter of footsteps on the roof.
Raccoons had raided bags of stale bread from a neighbor’s garbage last summer, choosing our roof as their banquet hall and their commode. It was disgusting. Rick and I had walked the block asking neighbors to place heavy rocks on their trash cans to prevent the little rascals from getting inside. With their food supply cut off, the raccoons got the message and moved on.
My first thought when I hear the noise on the roof: they’re back.
I run to the back door via the dining room but find a ladder is blocking my exit. I can’t open the door without knocking it down, and I panic thinking my children may be on the roof trying to shoo away an animal that could carry rabies.
Outside, I find reindeer and raccoons aren’t the only animals taken with rooftops.
Nick is climbing over the roof near the ridge. Ben stands at the top of the extension ladder, evidently giving his brother directions. My sweet little Megan is holding the ladder steady.
Nick has been a roof climber since before he turned five. He never needed a ladder; he had death-gripping toes and strong arms. It had scared me breathless the first time I caught him up there, but I’ve gotten used to it over the years; when he was little he called the roof his “office.” He’s always climbing something, but I draw the line at the rooftop in winter.
“Everybody freeze.”
Nick loses his footing and slides. My heart jumps out of my chest, but he just laughs.
“Whoaaaa,” he says, stopping his fall just above the gutters. He chooses to shimmy down a deck post instead of using the ladder, which is still occupied by Ben.
“I told you it wouldn’t be bad,” Ben says, addressing his brother as if I wasn’t there. “It’s not that slippery, and it’s snowing.”
Megan looks at me and wilts.
“I told them not to do it. I told them you would be angry.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” Ben says. “How was it, Nick?”
“Perfect. Had a great view in both directions. I’d have seen Mom pull up, if I had gotten to the ridge before she got home.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. They continue chatting about the vantage point from the roof as if it’s perfectly natural.
“Time out,” I shout.
The kids stop strategizing and look at me.
“You,” I say pointing at Ben and Nick, “put the ladder back in the garage, then all of you into the house, now.”
By the time the trio is seated on the couch, my heart is back where it belongs, but I’m angry at their recklessness.
“What were you thinking?”
They confess together.
Ben had summoned Nick and Megan down to his room for a strategy session to figure out how to catch our true friends in the act.
“We need a way to watch for them, without them knowing,” Nick had said. “We don’t want them to stop leaving the gifts.”
Ben comes up with two ideas: lie low on the floor of the garage with the big door open just enough to watch for cars, or go up on the roof.
Nick volunteers to take the high road.
“I told him it could be slippery,” Ben says, as if to make me feel better. “We were testing it out.”
Rick and I had taught our kids to be adventurous—hiking in the mountains, camping in the wilderness—and I feel somewhat responsible for their actions today. I have a feeling Rick would have been up there on the roof with them, if he had been here.
It’s Megan who realizes I’m not paying attention to the conversation.
“Earth to Mom?”
“We need to figure out when to go up. I don’t want to be lying on the roof any longer than I have to,” Nick says.
He still thinks this is going to happen. My children are crazy if they think I’m going to let them go up on a snowy roof at night, but maybe a stakeout by the garage door isn’t such a bad idea. I want to know who is leaving the gifts just as much as they do. I could layer the concrete floor with sleeping bags and blankets, make hot chocolate. It could be fun and we’d be together.
“Hellooo, don’t you think the gift givers will notice someone lying on the roof?” I ask.
“They’ll probably just think I’m a Christmas decoration,” Nick says.
“If you want to catch our friends, figure out a safe way to do it. Maybe tomorrow we can try Ben’s alternate plan.”
The boys head to the basement, and I fear another conspiracy may be afoot. Megan hangs out with me.
“Maybe we’ll have a snow day tomorrow,” she says hopefully. “Snow days all the way to Christmas break would be lovely.”
“Is it still snowing?” I ask.
Megan opens the front door and flips on the porch light. A small package sits in the snow outside the door.
“It’s here! The seventh gift!”
Ben and Nick hear Megan’s announcement and race back upstairs to confiscate the card. A debonair little snowman with a colorful string scarf and big red shoes smiles at us from the front cover. Inside, there are pictures of pine trees, and our family’s special version of the Christmas carol.
On the Seventh Day
of Christmas
Your true friends give to you …
Seven golden apples
Six holiday cups
Five angeled note cards
Four gift boxes
Three rolls of gift wrap
Two bags of bows
and