Night is a time of ownership. People are sleeping, and obligations are temporary suspended. It was good not to feel needed for a few hours, especially after the big Christmas cooking and cleaning. There was a need to give myself a present. Reading O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi came to mind. Long ago my children received a thick volume called The Book of Virtues, edited by William J Bennett. O. Henry’s story was in this book.
The characters: Della and Jim. The gifts: a fob chain and a pair of hair combs. The sacrifices: her hair, his watch. The irony: neither of them can use the gift.
I looked around my room: my children’s paintings when they were in preschool, a note from my daughter after her hat nearly fell off while dancing on stage, a plaster dinosaur, a red silk cocoon…I had never considered these things wise, but they had come from the Magi, who bore the gifts of love.
