graphix: spwilcen
Magic Door
Story time
Graphix: spwilcen
Arms full of gifts, I was proud of myself. I’d finished most of my Holiday shopping well before the eleventh hour. In past years, I romanticized the holiday event – huge, soft snowflakes drifting through yellow streetlamp halos as I walked past small shops on streets free of all but foot traffic. On Christmas Eve. Carolers on street corners. Santa-suit bell ringers tending charity buckets. Doors jing-jingling miniature sleigh bells as each customer entered expectantly into and left happily out of shops.
Early on in my adult life the folly of that bit of romance was relegated to Currier and Ives postcards and the ineffable Coca-Cola Santa Claus, bottle in hand, rosy-cheeked, one left to assume the old boy having just completed his magical evening rounds.
Rather the same never-realized ideal as gathering the extended family around Christmas eve, waiting for Daddy, son Thomas, and daughter Trudy to burst through the door dragging a nine-foot, snow-frosted evergreen fresh from the farm into the great room to be quickly posted into the stand and then decorated by all singing carols, stringing popcorn garlands, sipping spicy nog, and munching sugar cookies warm from Gran’s oven.
Anyone who left shopping to the last minute was an idiot.
Why it never occurred to me to detour back to my SUV, deposit my treasures to be better able to complete my last assignment I don’t know. I was caught-up in the spirit perhaps. Savoring bits of this modern holiday in the tiniest way resembling anything from Currier and Ives or Norman Rockwell.
My husband asked me to stop into McGuiness’s hardware store, itself something of an 1890’s throwback. I’d almost forgotten where it was. It was a little out of place tucked-away on a busy side street. McGuiness had two hurricane chimneys waiting, replacements for mantlepiece decorations that did not survive January to Thanksgiving storage in the garage attic.
McGuiness’s, something of an anachronism, was famous for hardware – knobs, latches, screws, nuts, bolts, and other who-knows-whats – and specialty hand tools found nowhere else, not even on the internet. Fergus McGuiness expected me. Fergus, also something of an anachronism, and my husband arranged the deal immediately after Hubby discovered the shattered chimneys.
Approaching the door, a mild panic set in. McGuiness was an old store, right out of Currier and Ives in fact. There was no automatic door opener. How on earth would I negotiate the door?
Just before it was a matter of either walking through the door or shuffling packages to free one hand, the door, of its own accord, opened, setting little bells to jing-jingling.
I looked through the doorway. No handsome male stood there smiling. No similarly harried woman smiled, holding the door for someone more heavily laden with packages. Nothing of the sort. Glancing to the counter at the back of the store, a little movement somewhat below my normal line of sight, caught my eye.
It was a little person. I mean a child. Smiling up at me, holding the door open.
“Why, thank you, young sir!”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” His smile was constant, his eyes, yes, his eyes twinkled.
“How refreshing to meet a young gentleman. Holding the door and ‘you’re welcoming’ and all!”
“It is my pleasure,” he grinned. The lad was dressed head to toe in greens and reds. Felt? Soft cotton anyway. Even had a red-stripey stocking cap atop his head. Somewhere was a mother who went just a bit overboard dressing her child ‘for the season.’
Stepping inside, I glanced once again to the counter at the back of the store. Fergus smiled and waved. I nodded in his direction before looking down to thank the young lad once more before hurrying back to chat with Fergus.
The door closed gently behind me, setting off another round of jing-jingling. I scanned the storefront windows, up and down the sidewalk. No one scurried-away outside, tall or short, clad in reds or greens, with or without a stocking cap.
No gallant young gentleman lingered inside the store either.
© SPWilcenski 2021
graphix: spwilcen
spwilcenwrites 12/2/2021
Ramblings 