Christmas is over for this year, yet the memories remain. In our close-knit family, we enjoyed lots of good food, fellowship with family and friends, as well as the giving and receiving of presents.
Through the years I have given and received slippers, perfume, bath salts and other rather predictable gifts. This year I tried to be creative with the holiday tokens I bestowed on my loved ones. Although I am proud of my gift-giving efforts, and my resolve to be unique, I was outdone by my friend/client Leah Farris.
Leah is the owner of Donato’s Hair Salon. She and I met nearly 20 years ago when she starting placing newspaper ads with me. Since then she has become my friend, hairdresser, confidant and the one I go to when I need a laugh or a hug. She is a hugger who not only embraces with firmness and warmth, she hangs on for a very long time before releasing her huggee.
This holiday season, I had a nice gift for her, and a couple of days before Christmas I started to call her to ask for a convenient time to come by with her present. Before I could finish dialing the phone, she, being a bit clairvoyant, called on the other line to ask me when I could drop over for us to exchange presents. I told her I could come by in a couple of hours, but she quickly encouraged me to stop by sooner, because as she put it, “Your gift is in my car, and I don’t want it to go bad.” My interest piqued, I jumped into the car and hurried over to her place of business, which is located near the corner of Orange Avenue and Carson Street.
While I was making my way to see her, I kept wondering what in the heck could she possibly have in her car that might “go bad.” “Could it be some kind of dairy product?” I wondered. Maybe. Or could it be some kind of food item containing mayonnaise? My next thought was that of some type of thirsty floral arrangement that might be slowly dropping petals onto her back seat. As I arrived, it hit me— maybe she had gotten me a dozen frozen tamales and was afraid they might thaw out before I could get them home. I convinced myself that I had finally figured out Leah’s cryptic message— my gift was no doubt frozen tamales.
When I walked into the salon, she greeted me warmly with one of her signature extra-squeezy hugs. Before I could say a word, Leah quickly escorted me out to her car to present me with the grand-daddy of all surprise gifts. My guesses were all far off the mark. What was handed to me was a red-cloth gift bag containing something very hard and very heavy— really heavy. As I peeked into the bag, I saw what was either a peculiar-looking smoked ham or the largest, heaviest and most oddly textured football ever created. I was wrong on both counts. As Leah walked me back into her salon, she helped me remove my weighty whatchamacallit— a 10-pound jackfruit.
Along with my strange-looking edible gift, Leah also gave me a folder containing information on what I now refer to as the care and feeding of the jackfruit. Contained within the folder are pages explaining how to prepare the fruit (a rather involved process), as well as its origin and health benefits.
On Christmas Eve, Steve and I tackled the beast, and we did our best to follow Leah’s instruction manual on how to dismember the weighty fruit. I must mention here that our jackfruit, who we now refer to as Leon (Noel spelled backwards) was larger, and weighed more than our 7-month-old puppy, Lily.
I quickly tired of the process and left it to Steve’s magic knife and spoon skills to get the job done. As he toiled over the fragrant Mr. Leon, I did my best to snap a few photos to help us commemorate the holiday experience.
When all was said and done, we sat down to enjoy the fruits of Leon’s loins. Yummy indeed! After eating it straight for a few days, I added some pineapple and blueberries to the bowl to create a fruit salad.
That is my story of the most unusual gift I ever received. Thank you, Leah, for giving us such a meaningful gift; we love you.
Note: Last week I wrote about us receiving daily surprise gifts that followed the theme of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song. In that column, I claimed to have forgotten what we received that symbolized the tenth day— 10 lords a leaping. Christmas Eve we came home from work and found a darling painted pottery frog with a tag that explained that the leaping lords were not available, so they sent the hoppy frog. I realized right then, I hadn’t forgotten what the 10th day’s gift was, it was just delivered to us out of order.
Christmas Day we didn’t find a gift on our porch that represented the 12th day of Christmas— twelve drummers drumming. We were disappointed as we were ready for our Secret Santa to reveal himself or herself. After visiting Steve’s brother for dinner, we dropped by to see Steve’s daughter Tracy and our grandson Carson. During our gift exchange with them, Carson went over to the freezer and then brought something to his “Grandpa Steve.” What was in the package? Two drumstick ice-cream novelties were neatly packed in a plastic bag with a tag declaring the frozen goodies as the final gift— a symbol of 12 drummers drumming. We were surprised and grateful to find that Tracy and Carson had worked so hard to make sure that we had a lovely holiday experience. We thanked them on Christmas, but I want to thank them now, in print, for being so generous with their time and with their love.
