By Karen Miller

“I’m the daughter. I’m here to clean out the house.”

The realtor lets me in and mumbles something about leaving me alone to my task, and of course I go directly into the living room, where the package has been sitting on the mantel above the fireplace for 62 years. Gathering dust and curiosity for a lifetime, the package resembles a small hat box, wrapped with green striped paper, and tied with a red velvet bow, although it’s faded and shabby now. It is only hours after my father’s funeral, nearly three years after my mother’s; I have finally been given permission to open the mysterious package.

The Christmas package arrived on my parents’ door step the week before Christmas, in 1952. They had only been married a few months, and were incredibly in love, and also, incredibly young. When my mother spotted the package at the front door, she thought it was a special gift from my father. There was a tag on it that read ‘Do Not Open until Christmas.’ She brought it inside and placed it under the Christmas tree. When my father came home from work that evening my mother mentioned the gift to him, and after inspecting it, he told her it wasn’t from him. Surprised, she said she wondered who it was from, and then my father wondered, too, and they spent a few minutes passing the package between themselves, guessing what it could be. Perhaps a box of cookies from a neighbor. Or a fruitcake from the man they bought the vacuum cleaner from. Maybe it was one of those promotional gifts, from a service station, or cleaning company. They speculated on and off for a day or so, and then the package began to cause a problem.

I mentioned that my parents were young and in love. Yes, they were passionate, but they fought as much as they made up, and that package began the biggest fight of their marriage, one that would nearly break them up. You see, my mother was a beautiful woman, and my father was very jealous. He began to consider the package might have been a gift to my mother from another man, maybe a secret admirer, or maybe even a lover. My mother was also jealous of my father – he had several secretaries working for him, and everywhere my parents went, other women would smile at my handsome father. My mother was sure that one of his coworkers, or maybe a flirtatious neighbor, had sent him the package. Within a few days, they started arguing constantly, enraged with a hostile jealously that mounted to astronomical proportions, culminating on Christmas Eve, when the two of them exploded. Each accused the other of having an affair and eventually, my father stormed out of the house, leaving my mother in tears, curled up on the couch, where she spent the night.

The next morning, she awoke as my father came through the front door. His face was streaked with tears and he sank to his knees in front of her and put his head on her lap, begging her for forgiveness. He never really thought she was having an affair, and he didn’t understand how everything had gotten so out of hand. My mother began to cry and the two held each other, vowing they would never distrust the other again. When my mother suggested they throw the package away, and forget they even received it, my father had a better idea. He wanted them to keep the package, as a symbol of their trust, as a remembrance of how tenuous life can be – one day their marriage was perfect, and a few days later they were contemplating divorce – something they never wanted to happen again. The two agreed to keep the package on the mantel in full view, as a reminder of what almost happened that Christmas in 1952. They never opened it.

My parents made up, as always; I was born nine months later. Throughout my life I have listened to the story of the mysterious Christmas package. They told it every year on Christmas Eve. Friends and family members marveled that they had never opened the package, weren’t they curious, how they could go all these years not knowing what was inside? Every year I picked up the package, shook it, begged my parents to let me open it, but they always refused. Someday, my father would say, when your mother and I are gone, you can open the package. It won’t matter to us anymore, he would smile, we will both be in heaven together.

I was jealous of my parents’ marriage, I admit. It was long and full of love. Unfortunately, I didn’t fare so well myself. Divorced twice, with two children, three grandchildren. My life is okay, but I never had what my parents had together. How did they do it? How could they start an argument and automatically stop it before it escalated into something they would regret? Was it because of the mysterious Christmas package, or was it something else? Every time my mother and father would start arguing about something, my father would holler, “Better watch what you say or I’m going to open that package!!” My mother’s anger would dissipate, and before long they would be kissing, apologizing to each other.

And now I’m here at the house to open the package, trying to find meaning in all of this, as if I really expect that whatever is in the package will reveal something I don’t already know. The velvet ribbon is so brittle; it crumbles in my fingers as I untie the bow. My hands are shaking as I lift the lid…

~~~

This is the end of the story, and it’s up to the reader to imagine what the box might have contained. But as Rusty once commented when I posted this on Facebook, “really it doesn’t matter what was in it, because the box itself represented trust, love and faith between the husband and wife” but I think that trust was visible only as long as it remained unopened on the mantle.