Six Season Passes Wrapped the Same

The boxes

I had the six boxes in a laundry basket. I carried it out to the middle of the yard and set it in the snow.

“Okay,” I called. “Everybody who’s a grandkid, over here.”

They came running. Six kids, panting, snow on their knees. I handed out the boxes one at a time, reading the names off the tags. Sully. Coral. Tate. Will. Micah. Christa.

“Nobody opens it yet,” I said. “On three. Everybody at once.”

Coral was hopping. Will had already gotten a finger under the tape. Christa was holding hers flat against her chest with both hands, like she was afraid somebody might take it back.

That one about broke me. I had to count fast.

“One. Two. Three.”

Six kids tore paper at the same time. There is no sound quite like it.

Sully figured it out first, because he’s the oldest. “It’s a season pass,” he yelled. “It’s a whole season!”

Then they all had them out, the papers in their mittens, holding them up and comparing. Tate read his, then grabbed Micah’s and read his, then held them up side by side.

“Look,” Tate said. “We’re the same.”

Micah didn’t say anything. He just looked at the two papers. Then he looked up at me, and I nodded, and he grinned so big I could see the gap where his molar was coming in.

Charla on the steps

I didn’t look at Charla. I had promised myself I wouldn’t. This was not for her. If I had looked at her to see her face, it would have turned into something for her, and I didn’t want that.

But Christa did.

Christa stood in the snow with her pass in one hand and the new mittens in the other, and she looked up at the porch steps where her grandmother was standing. Then she walked over.

I started to follow her. Sterling caught my sleeve.

“Let her,” he said.

Christa climbed the three steps. She held up the paper so Charla could read it.

“I got the same as everybody,” she said. “Mom bought one for Sully and Coral and Tate and Will too. Even though they’re your real ones.”

I watched my mother-in-law’s face come apart.

I don’t know how else to say it. I have seen a lot of faces at the worst moment of a person’s life. I know what it looks like when somebody has been holding something up for a very long time and their arms finally give out. That is what Charla’s face did.

She set her mug down on the railing. Her hand was shaking so hard the coffee slopped over.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “Oh, no. No. You are not, you are not something other.”

Then she looked past Christa, right at me.

“Cecily,” she said. Her voice was a voice I had never heard out of her. “Can I tell you something? I owe you a reason. Nobody in this family has heard it. Not even Sterling.”