I've been opening boxes: Christmas decorations--and found The Grinch. Many of you know that the Grinch was one of my favorites (though I not-so-secretly preferred Max, his dog-turned-reindeer, who I identified with more strongly. Max was a victim of circumstance, manipulated and drawn into someone else's plans. There's something familiar about that if you belong to any organization.)
Anyway. I like the Grinch, and one Christmas, years back, one of the local department stores (Macy's?) was giving out as a premium for Christmas shoppers a stuffed Grinch toy. I spent the requisite amount at the store and came home with my prize. BUT, alas! He wasn't the Grinch I loved. He had weird eyes. Yellow plastic cartoon eyes that had no spark of Grinchiness, no life, in them.
I complained. Which is one of the things I do best. To all and sundry. Continuously. Including friends and family. And here is where my story really begins. Suggestions ranged from tossing the Grinch into the nearest trashcan. He was after all not a purchase. I didn't NEED him. I was simply disappointed in the realization of my original expectations. The Grinch should have been featured in my stairway-of-stuffed-animals that ran from foyer floor to the second floor in a sweeping curve. (I loved that stairway of be-ribboned toys and animals and monkeys swinging from the railing...)
Enter my friend, Ann. She met my complaint onslaught with total agreement, said, "Let me take him and I'll fix him." Ann, as I well knew, could work miracles. She took my wild-eyed Grinch and fixed him. I don't know how, but the plastic eyes disappeared, and in their place...? Well, somehow, the Grinch (though still a cartoon) was now real. And while his heart still grew three sizes in the story, for me, it was his eyes that worked that miracle. And Ann's hands.
What kind of friend would do that? Who would indulge that kind of frivolous wish? I think about that every year when I open the box that holds my Christmas toys and see my Grinch. We have moved since then and the two-story curved stairway is no more. Most of the animals are gone. No 10-foot tree occupies our foyer in our new circumstances. But the Grinch-- my friend, the transformed Grinch--comes out of his box for a visit every Christmas, and, though there are miles between Ann and me, and all sorts of life changes that have separated us-- though she probably doesn't even remember her bout of Grinch-y eye surgery--I remember. I remember that there was someone who saw things through my eyes, and fixed something small, something insignificant, something altogether unnecessary, and did it for me. Small and insignificant and unnecessary as I was, Ann saw me, and always did. I never said the 'thank you' she deserves until now.
