Day 11: Carousel

My former mother-in-law did all of her holiday shopping on QVC, the 24 hour home shopping network featuring heavily made-up, over-the-top TV personalities trying to sell you a slew of "limited edition" and "last chance" items. With a phone call and credit card you can purchase anything in twelve easy payments. Every year, my mother-in-law boasted about how she'd finished shopping for everyone in June. She was also notoriously good at buying things with her own personal tastes in mind. My first Christmas with my husband she bought me elbow height, black and pink polka dotted gloves, long silver earrings and a matching necklace that I quickly slipped into a donation box before January. My husband and sister-in-law graciously warned me that feigning excitement would be the only way to escape the holidays unscathed.  She'd pass us gifts one at a time and stand watch as we pulled the paper off. Coming from a family whose gift giving was a disordered free for all, the spotlight attention made it ever-more challenging to appear enthusiastic.  Over the years, I learned to accept with a smile the silky, lacy, leopard-print, sequined, and ill-fitting items that she piled upon me each December.

Birthdays were not nearly as important to her as Christmas, Saint Patrick's Day, or Bunker Hill Day, so it came as a surprise when I randomly received a package for my 26th birthday.  I cautiously opened the cardboard box and lifted the carousel from the styrofoam and bubble wrap. Porcelain perhaps, or something similar, painted intermittently with gold and printed sporadically with flowers. The bottom winds around to produce music and sends the top spinning. Oddly enough, I danced to the song in a recital when I was 10 years old and committed to becoming a professional ballet dancer after high school.

Maybe it was the nostalgic music that made me place this on a bookshelf or the fact that I loved carousels as a child. Maybe I kept it because I once collected music boxes and would send them spinning when I was feeling upset or depressed. Or maybe it was the fact that my mother-in-law had a way of showing up at our doorstep unannounced, inviting herself into our apartment, and perusing every room before randomly asking about a gift she'd given years ago.

I spent a recent snow day moving furniture around my apartment, and I can now see the carousel from where I sit on my living room couch. I find myself glancing up at it often and thinking about how I don't need or want it. I plan to find it a new home in hopes that the repetitive rhythm of the waltz will provide a soothing solace for someone else.