Winter Gift (essay). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Darcy Cummings

WINTER GIFT T

he book was huge, maybe 12 x 15 inches, encased in a linen-like material that matched its pale yellow binding. At seven, I’d never seen a book with its own coat. My mother showed me how to carefully slide the book out of the sleeve, carefully turn the pages. On the cover was the title: Fairy Flowers. By Isadora Newman. Illustrated by Willy Pogany. Inside the front cover, a dazzle of gold letters and dancing figures. The first illustration was of a gypsy cart, decorated with ribbons and bright flowers; a bride and groom were riding away. At the bottom of the picture was the road: it seemed to unfurl from my chest where I’d lodged the book. This was one of the pictures I remember most vividly: escape, joy, some magic down the road.

I turned the pages from one illustration to the next: a giant boy, grasping the sun, slowly sinking into the soil, his distraught parents watching, terrified. The Legend of the Sunflower. Then a small child in golden clothes in a gold four poster bed—a prince, probably—looking spoiled and petulant. The colors glowed on the beautifully printed, pasted-in illustrations. As soon as I came to the final illustration, I went back to the beginning of the book and began leafing them through again.

Fairy Flowers, according to the subtitle, is a collection of stories and fairy tales about the factual and legendary origin of flowers. The text was supposed to be read to, not by, a child—many of the words were ones I’d never seen or heard. A first edition, published either at Oxford University Press, or as the first American edition in 1929, it was an expensive book, not really appropriate

for a second grade child. My godmother, Aunt Dee, gave me the book for no reason—it wasn ’t Christmas, or my birthday. But coming in the mail at the drab, damp, cold middle of winter, when we rarely got to the public library, the book was doubly welcome.

All Dee ’ s gifts to her nieces and nephews seemed inappropriate, at least to my parents. Why give a small child such a book—suppose it was ruined by my younger brothers and sister? Would I take care of it? Who would have the time to read it to me? How much did it cost? How much food could have been bought, bills paid, if Dee had given that money to them? They always seemed to have questions about her gifts. Some parents might have put the book away, brought it down from a high shelf for special occasions, but I was allowed to keep it in the room I shared with my toddler sister, perhaps because my mother was an artist and encouraged us to look at her collection of prints—or more likely, because it kept me quiet for hours. They also didn ’t want to annoy Dee. She had money, was childless and nearing forty. I was her godchild, had her name, her exact name before she married. I was the first grandchild. So I was to be indulged, encouraged. In any case, given my carelessness with possessions, the book wouldn ’t last long. Very soon, inside the front cover, I wrote my name in huge letters with a big black crayon. I meant it not as a desecration, but as a declaration of my joy in possessing Fairy Flowers.

While my parents considered the book a foolish choice for the careless, rebellious child I was, Dee had the gift of knowing exactly what toys or books would resonate with me. Her gifts were subversive, instinctively tuned in to the psyche of an unhappy little girl. I think she chose those gifts because she had

The cover of Fairy Flowers by Isadora Newman and illustrated by Willy Pogany.