The Recycled Goat
Rebecca Sicree on the Adventures of Gift-Giving in a Large Family
It was one of our more embarrassing Christmases. It started when our daughter Isabel opened her grandmother's gift: a beautiful doll of a newborn baby. It was exactly what she had wanted. It was also identical to the one from me that she had opened a minute before. Obviously, I had gotten my Christmas lists mixed up.
But I was thinking on my feet that morning.
"Oh look, Isabel!" I exclaimed, "Twins!"
Isabel's puzzled look turned to a smile.
I wasn't so lucky with Teresa, who was staring at her jewelry kit in bewilderment.
"Don't you like it?" I asked.
"Oh, it's not that," she said at last. "It's just that Marta gave this to me at my birthday party back in July. Don't you remember? You put it away right away so that John wouldn't eat the beads."
"I thought you bought it for her," my husband whispered to me.
"I thought you bought it for her," I whispered back.
Rebecca Sicree writes from Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. She and her family attend Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church in nearby State College. She and her husband Andrew have ten children, six of whom are now adults.
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