Redemption,
the act of being saved from error, sin or evil, is not always a great,
substantial event. Sometimes it occurs as just a tiny burst of illumination,
come and gone as unexpectedly and fleeting as a butterfly alighting for a
second on your knee. If you're looking in the wrong direction, you miss it.
Recently I experienced
just such a moment of redemption at a Christmas Yankee Swap party, the kind at
which everyone brings a wrapped present to be opened one by one. The only rule
is that as you pick your present, you can swap it for any other gift already
opened.
Very good or
very bad swap presents create the most fun because you can give or get either. Some
years ago I was invited to a Yankee Swap and ended up, amid much snickering,
with a jigsaw puzzle of a massively overweight, naked man holding a
strategically placed wash cloth as he climbed out of a claw-footed bathtub. When
I divulged the next year that I had thrown it away in disgust, everyone was
horrified. Apparently the puzzle was a beloved tradition that had been passed
around for years.
So this
week, I arrived late at a Christmas party with artist and writer friends as the
Yankee Swap began, and I just had time for a quick sip of wine before my name was
called to pick a present. Opening it I discovered a charming, bright 4”X6”
pastel original signed by a friend. I loved it and immediately began thinking
where to place it.
Several
gifts later someone opened a picture frame for a 25th wedding
anniversary. “I’m divorced,” she declared. “This is definitely getting passed on." She walked around the room
looking over the opened gifts, then stopped in front of me to examine the little
pastel.
"Sorry,"
she said, grinning as she claimed it and handed me the wedding anniversary
picture frame. I smiled as I gave it up, mildly disappointed, however, in the
spirit of things I liked knowing the new owner would enjoy it and decided to
ask the artist for another one of her prints.
Then it hit me.
I was replaying an old sad tape but I finally got the ending right. This was a
moment of redemption.
Years ago,
the first Christmas after my husband and I ended a 20-year marriage I was at a
party for new singles. I hated my unwelcome new identity and every Christmasy
reminder of the changes in my life. At the event’s Yankee Swap I drew a set of
Christmas candleholders, colorful little wooden baby blocks that spelled out
"Merry Christmas." I was delighted and began thinking where I could
place them. The game was nearly over when a swapper came up to me, holding out
her gift to me.
But I couldn’t
hand mine over. I felt close to crying at relinquishing the one good thing at
this miserable occasion. She was an older woman. She looked into my face and
immediately saw my distress. "You want to keep it, don't you?" I
nodded, mortified but helpless to deny it. "I'll pick something
else," she said to me quietly, and moved on. I felt ashamed, acting like a
child who refused to share, but, still, relieved to keep the blocks and grateful
that more had not been asked of me.
So, this
week, decades later, I am again at a Christmas Yankee Swap and the gift I was
so pleased to receive was again being taken. But this time I laughed as I
handed it over, my vulnerability and fragility long gone. It felt good to
respond as I wished I had years ago. I had been given another chance to get it
right.
Today as I
took out the little wooden blocks I’ve always associated with a Christmas
kindness and my own frailty, I felt somehow cleansed, unburdened. I thought of
the deep wisdom of the Shaker song’s lyrics that say “by turning, turning, we
come round right.” So I had and so it has.
Redemption,
like other fine gifts, can arrive in very small packages.
