Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“I’m all ears.” Opal sipped her coffee and picked up one of the sandwiches. “Tell me your holiday card story, and if your story is good and we have time before Bernadette gets back, I’ll tell you about the time she had a little too much to drink, fell down, and got her high heel stuck in her panties on the way back up.”
I chuckled. “I might have to bolster my story a little to make sure I get to hear yours.”
Opal’s eyes twinkled. “Something tells me your story will be more than enough. Go on, now. Let’s hear why everyone in this town except me gets a Christmas card from you.”
“Well, I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey. When I was little, my dad used to tell me all these amazing stories about growing up in Laurel Lake. Two years before he died was the first time the town was named America’s Friendliest by People magazine. He was so proud that he told everyone who would listen. Laurel Lake became this mythical, sort of magical place to me. He always promised we’d visit, but my mom is a very successful neurosurgeon, and she works a lot. We’d planned to come a few times, but something would always pop up for her and we’d have to cancel. My dad died very unexpectedly when I was thirteen—cardiac arrest in his sleep. We’d never made it down.”
Opal covered her heart with her hand. “Oh, that’s terrible. Such a young age to lose your father.”
“It was definitely tough. My dad was my best friend. I was never too close with my mom. My parents were a very odd couple—Dad laughed a lot, told tall tales, and had a warm and loving way about him. My mom, on the other hand, is a bit cold—sort of detached and all business, even to me. Her career always came first, and she wasn’t home a lot. To be honest, I never really understood their pairing. But for whatever reason, my dad was over the moon about my mom. He worshiped the ground she walked on.” I paused and sipped my iced coffee. “Anyway, back to the cards. After my dad died, I started spending a lot of time at my best friend Chloe’s house. Chloe was one of seven kids, and they didn’t have that much money, but they all loved Christmas. Every year in late November, they would decorate their house with Christmas cards from the prior year hung on strings. They draped them on every wall in the kitchen and living room. My house was done up for the holidays by a professional decorating team that came in and made everything perfect. I once asked my mother if I could put some homemade ornaments on the tree, and she told me to put them on the little tree in Nilda’s room. Nilda was our live-in housekeeper who also kept an eye on me because my mother was rarely home.”
I nibbled on a sandwich before I continued. “Fast forward five years to when I turned eighteen, and I went away to college and got my own studio apartment in New York. I couldn’t wait to decorate for Christmas that first year—my way, not my mom’s way. So I got five boxes of Christmas cards, fifty in total, and sent them out to all my friends. I think I received one back. In hindsight, most eighteen-year-olds are either too broke to send cards or too wrapped up in their lives to take the time to do it. It made me sad, though, because I’d wanted to hang the cards from string like Chloe’s family did. The following year, I came up with the idea to send cards to strangers and ask them to send one back. The morning after Thanksgiving, I took a picture of myself smiling in front of my Christmas tree. I hand wrote a message in each card saying I wanted to collect cards to decorate my house, and I hoped they’d send me one. I had the Laurel Lake phone book in a box with my dad’s things, so I decided to mail the cards to people who lived here. I figured if they were America’s friendliest people, I’d have a better shot of getting a card in return. That year, I sent out fifty cards and got forty-one back. I got one from my friends the year before, yet forty-one from complete strangers. I hung them from string on all of the walls of my little apartment.”
“I love that!” Opal said. “Your dad’s people took care of you after he couldn’t any longer.”
“I never thought of it that way, but yeah, I guess they did.” I sipped. “I still had the cards hanging up in March, so I decided to send Easter cards to the forty-one people who had sent me a Christmas card. The next holiday season, I sent fifty new cards to random people from that phone book, and close to the same number reciprocated. Over the years, I’ve continued to send to the old ones and add new. I think I receive about nine-hundred cards for Christmas now, and a little less for the smaller holidays, like Fourth of July. I go in alphabetical order in the Laurel Lake phone book. I’m up to the Ns now. Some get returned because the book I’m using is outdated, but I enjoy doing it.”