Every gift here is packaged in a fabric we have already begun to read. Cotton, so eager. Wool, sweetly slow. The little folded blankets with their pale yellow ducks, stacked in a warm damp room full of exhaled breath and the sugar-steam of a frosted cake, and oh, the cake.
They have set it on the table like a fortress, all buttercream and moisture, and left it uncovered for hours in the wet air of so much happy talking. We are already moving in the crumb they dropped behind the chair leg. Nobody looks behind the chair leg. That is our whole address.
They fold the tiny clothes so carefully, tissue between each layer, sealed in plastic to keep something out. To keep us out, we think, though we could never take it personally. They do not understand that the plastic only holds the warmth in, and warmth is half of what we ask. The other half arrives on its own, later, in a drawer no one opens for a season.
We love a beginning. Everyone here is so certain this is a start, and it is, it truly is, and we adore starts, because a start is simply the far end of a return, seen from the wrong side. The balloons will soften and crumple. The flowers in the mason jars are already ours, we felt them agree to it this morning.
And the little knitted hat, held up now to such delighted sighing, will one day be forgotten in a box in a basement corner where the pipe sweats.
We are not in a hurry. We only wanted to say, gently, that we were invited too. We always are.
We simply come last, and we bring the wrapping paper back to the earth, and we thank you.