The Three Little Kittens: A Post-Christmas Miracle

On a recent drive to Lake Tahoe, I asked Jim to turn into the TJ Maxx parking lot so I could zip in and try to find a nice winter cap.  The variety of winter accessories is much smaller in Placerville.  As luck would have it, I found three knit hats and a new pair of gloves!  Christmas--it's all about the giving--from me, to me!  I was quite pleased with my purchases, especially the nifty new hand warmers.  Quite chic, in gray, with a beige cuff and tip on each index finger and a smart wooden button affixed with gray yarn.  Score!

Fast forward three weeks.  I'd managed to wear each hat a few  times and the gloves were very comfy after several wearings.  When the afternoon's plans changed to include a trip to Folsom's seasonal outdoor ice rink with my daughter, Melanie, granddaughter, Jaiden, and two of their friends, Jennifer and Maya, I was tickled.  The weather had become very cold in the days after Christmas, but the sun shone brightly, with thin opalescent clouds dragging across the sky.  All I had to do to be ready was to pop on a perky chapeau and don my fashionably well-coordinated gloves. 

Uh-oh!  I remembered that last night while searching for my phone in the unwieldy mess that is my purse, I had only seen one glove.  So, in the light of day, I checked again.  One glove.  I checked my coat pockets. No glove. I checked my car.  No glove. I checked outside around my car. No glove. I checked every room in the house.  No glove.  I checked all the various drawers in the house in which, at any time in the past 35 years, I have stored a glove or scarf.  No glove.  And so, just like the three little kittens in the nursery rhyme, I began to cry.

Only I didn't cry.  I virtually never cry.  Instead, I began with a  pathetic whine, which, within minutes, morphed into a full-fledged, obscenity-laced hissy fit.  I have many witnesses who will vouch for the fact that this is most definitely my least attractive character trait.  I know it, and I do wish it wasn't so. I really do need better self-control.  I know I'm being a complete and ridiculous bitch, but there you are. Soon the walls of the house echoed with my foul-mouthed lamentations. By  the time my daughter arrived to pick me up, I was in high dudgeon, an occurrence which my family is all too familiar with, and which they loathe.  At first solicitous of my sorry predicament, both my husband and daughter helped retrace my searches throughout purse, car, driveway, and drawers--a house upturned.  Knowing full well that I have several pairs of perfectly suitable gloves, their help became ever more grudgingly given until both Jim and Melanie were, in no uncertain (or kindly) terms insisting that I GET OVER IT!

Apparently, there would be no pie.  I'd be lucky to still be taken to the ice rink!

Melanie's teeth and fists were clenched as she began easing out of our driveway.  Now, though still greatly saddened by the loss of one of my  new, but treasured, and most favorite gloves, I felt more ashamed than anything else.  What a baby!  Albeit, a baby with the mouth of a Marine drill sergeant. Maybe I'd feel better with a piece of gum to chew on, instead of chewing up the world around me. So, with my naked little hand, I reached into my purse, and immediately up popped a glove, with spring action like a jack-in-the-box. Really--as if the hand of God had opened up and fired the glove right at me. Not the glove that had lain at the bottom of my purse since yesterday, alone and pitiful. But the missing glove!  I now had two!  How was this possible, after all the searches that had been conducted in the past forty-five minutes?

"It's a post-Christmas miracle!"  I shrieked.  Melanie, all too accustomed to my outbursts, largely ignored me.  As I told her of the inexplicable, spring-loaded and sudden appearance of my missing mitten, she looked like she was pondering placing me in a home sooner than previously anticipated. "Well, Mom, that's good.  Now let's hit the ice rink and have some fun." Pat, pat, pat.  There, there.

I can't remember how many times I mentioned the post-Christmas miracle that afternoon.  But we did indeed have a wonderful time at the rink.  Melanie and Jennifer, dutiful moms, adjusted Jaiden's and Maya's skates, kept their scarves for them when they got too warm, and kept watch over their babies.  I took pictures.  Later, after the girls had left to go shopping with Jennifer, my dutiful daughter took me to dinner.

And I had pie.