Disappearing Presents

December is a busy month for me. Not only do I have Christmas and New Years, but our anniversary is also in December. The year we were married five years, our friends had a surprise party for us to celebrate. The party was actually early in the month--around the second or third. During the party, I happened to glance out the window and saw a For Rent sign across the street.

We'd been looking for a bigger apartment for several months. We ran across the street, talked to the couple who owned the building and arranged to move in on the 16th of December--our actual anniversary.

As you may imagine, the next two weeks were very busy. In our old apartment, the Christmas tree was already up and decorated. Presents were under the tree. And of course, we also had two little boys aged one and two.

I packed all the stuff that could be boxed up and we drove back and forth with loads of boxes in our car, but we hired a moving company for the furniture. Finally, the day of the move dawned...with an ice storm. The area of Chicago where we lived was a warren of narrow one way streets with cars parked on both sides of the street.

The movers arrived and carried the furniture down to the truck. When they were ready, we followed them to our new apartment, creeping along on ice covered streets. When they pulled up in front of our new apartment, we saw a miraculous thing. There was actually parking space in front of the building!

And then open mouthed the house hunk and I sat dumbfounded as the the moving truck slid sideways into the parking space, coming to a halt neatly at the curb! The driver hopped out, stared at the truck, shook his head and grinned at us before motioning for us to park in the space behind the truck.

Heh.

We set the tree up, unpacked the necessities, redecorated and on Christmas Day celebrated as usual. Fortunately, our little boys were young enough that they never knew the difference because we were finding those packed away presents for the next few months...

anny