microwaving oz

the microwave sat sealed in its box in the corner of the dining area, as if it had just been delivered that day from UPS.  he never said anything more that day as i just looked up from the box, started crying and ran out of the room.  the microwave was never discussed.  ever, it just sat in the box in the corner.  it was now forgotten, really, but not quite, really.  and we ended up going to a movie on christmas the spirit totally gone for the rest of the day.  and, life as normal continued.

it was my niece that opened the box and took out the microwave and found the christmas gift inside, still wrapped, inside the microwave, which she opened to make her popcorn she brought for dinner at my apartment she was "house sitting" for us that week while we went on vacation.  the old one blew up, literally, when she tried popping her dinner the night before, then, of course, she saw the new one and did what I probably should have done 7 months earlier and set it up for use.  my niece, of course, told us the minute we walked in the door, about the microwave and the explosion and how she "installed" the new one for us, and then she handed me the present that she had found inside the present that disappointed me so much.

she was talking 100 miles an hour about exploding microwaves and a fire, but everything was OK, and the new microwave.  heart stopped.  they had just returned from the most blissful trip together, and there it was that microwave and everything that it meant or didn't mean really.  and here now was an equally beautifully wrapped present which matched the original one thought not exactly, yet by design complementary.

i just looked at it.  and heard nothing else that she was saying, until he asked, "aren't you going to open it?"

i looked up at him, he was smiling, of course, and fortunately that smile he wore bore the bliss of the shore they were still really on in their minds when they walked in the door.  i looked at the present and wondered out loud, "ok, but what could it be?"  i felt my niece looking at me and as i looked in her eyes, curiosity swelled in the smile she held that shifted ever so slightly as she noticed the tear falling now.

i took a deep breathe like i did on christmas day, but today i could tell it was different.  i unwrapped the gift and opened the small box, inside there was a cotton cloth and under it was a piece of paper folded up twice.  i opened it up and all that it said, is "i don't care, i just want to have as much fun with u as possible."

Microwaving Oz

The package under the Christmas tree was a big box, red shiny paper with happy snowmen surrounded its contents with a huge red and silver bow wrapping itself around it in perfect dimension.  It was a beautiful gift.  It was a department store wrap job to be certain; of course, he wouldn't have wrapped it himself.

It was our third Christmas together.  Our first one since we decided he'd move in with me, I did have my own apartment and it was just too expensive for anything else.  My thoughts were interrupted by yet another chime from my phone reminding me that I too should be tagging merriment and holiday wishes to everyone's walls or sending out a text blast or something, but instead I turned my phone off and took another drink of coffee.

I was intrigued and perplexed by that big box.  WTF is it?  It was heavy too, not real heavy, but too heavy to be anything I could possibly think of, and it definitely did not come from Regulation or Tripp NYC, not with that wrapping.  It looked like it came from Sears.

Ok, what would he buy me from a department store?  Total blank.  I looked at him as he was coming down the hallway, passed the tree and the Present (which was not there when we went to bed), and into the room as he continued his conversation on the phone with his mother.  He rolled his eyes at me while smiling, and said, "of course, we'll be there at 6 for dinner."  We never made it to dinner.

It wasn't so much that he gave me a kitchen appliance for Christmas, but he gave me a microwave!  Seriously!  WTF.  I had not used a microwave in my life.  The one in my little kitchen was here when I moved in and I never used it.  My mom was one of those moms who KNEW about microwaves and what they do to our food and our electromagnetic fields.  Anyway, no.  I have never used a microwave and I just stared at the beautiful box likely containing the most hi-tech microwave available to mankind.

"What?  You don't like it?!  Your old one in the kitchen absolutely sucks."  He asked absolutely glowing as if he had saved the world from nuclear meltdown.  I did not even know what to do, say or how to respond.

I didn't look at him, I just stared at the box.  I turned it around, fondling the slick colorful cardboard box, thinking about its journey to be here and everything in my head that it brought to light.  The little robot drones in the warehouse, the overworked clerk in the department store.  Yet, probably the thought that screamed the loudest was the fact that someone just gifted me something that only a stranger would give me.

... to be continued