The Brown Paper Package to Sit Inside of Before it Can Be Opened

It was to be the most extraordinary gift Grandpa had ever received, and of course, it was going to be wrapped in brown paper packaging.

“Give me a hint,” he rasped. “How big is it?”

“It’s so big,” replied his granddaughter, “that you have to wear a blindfold when you walk up to it.”

“I don’t need a car, Lucy. I’m giving up driving later this year. My eyesight.”

“It’s not a car, Papa,” she said, delighted at his wrong guess.

Papa grew up in Haiti. He had in fact lived there all of his life. He visited Lucy in Florida when she first moved to the States every few years; she visited him in Haiti on all the others. Though they spoke on the telephone every Sunday afternoon, it was a Christmas telephone call many years ago that inspired this year's present--this most extraordinary gift ever to be received (and the brown paper package would not be omitted. Grandpa loved the stuff).

He didn’t normally fly anymore. But Lucy made special, special arrangements for him to fly first class all the way.

His mind wasn’t all there anymore. He had actually given up driving 5 years ago. That was essential to the surprise. She couldn’t hide that he was flying to Denver, Colorado. But she knew he would likely forget what city he was in once there.

She would need a miracle for it to be the best it could be — no snow in Colorado the week leading up to Christmas, then, snow on Christmas. With global warming, the first part shouldn’t be hard, but the second…

That was why she drove him up to Vail. It was hours and hours through the Rocky Mountains. He napped much but peered with marveled old eyes much, too, at the walls of boulders and sweeping scenes of evergreen. She smiled so small; its depth of joy would never be known by anyone but someone who knew her intimately.

Lucy fought hard to have wealth, and in the States, she was one of the few to realize that famous dream. Many Haitian women became nurses, but she had become a doctor.

And her vision of success had always been the vision of spoiling her family. Grandpa was the last of it. The last of her family.

She took him to Vail, world-famous resort of the wealthy. And, of the young and ski-and-snowboard-obsessed. But not to ski, and not to fraternize with the young (necessarily). She was going to make a dream of his come true.

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Once he was inside the house, she tucked him into bed in a room with no windows (perhaps the only one with that claim in the giant, airy mansion with two walls made entirely of glass).

“Don’t come out, Grandpa. You’ll need to put the blindfold on again in the morning. I’ll guide you into the living room in the morning. Then you can take it off and see your surprise! You have a bathroom right here, see?” She showed him the en suite bathroom.

“What on earth is this present?” he asked, agog. He trusted her so completely that none of this made him ill at ease. She was his baby granddaughter. They were thick as thieves.

“According to my cell phone,” said Lucy, gazing dramatically at her Apple wristwatch, “it’ll start to arrive at 3 a.m. So definitely no peaking at Santa!”

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Lucy sat Grandpa down in the middle of the mansion’s vaulted living room. He had a blindfold on— dutifully undisturbed. Despite the walls of floor-to-ceiling windows and the bright mountain morning, it was dark inside.

You see, according to Lucy's plot, he must not see from the outside or from within that the house was wrapped up in brown paper!

What a project it had been to commission— waxed brown paper ordered half a year in advance, and a team of workers hired Christmas week to wrap up a mountainside mansion with what seemed a hundred glass windows.

“Are you comfortable, Papa?”

“Yes,” he said from the depths of the luxurious couch. It faced one of those walls made of windows. Once the brown paper was taken off, there would be a panoramic view of the mountainsides.

“Take off the blindfold!”

With shaking fingers bubbled with age, Grandpa did so. His excitement was huge.

“Why, the windows are covered up!” he said.

“With brown paper…”

“Why— mercy Lord, brown paper— “

Lucy discretely hit “send” on a prepared text to the workers:

“OPEN THE PACKAGE”

And then the brown paper packaging of the house began to tear, peel, and pop away from the outside. Gorgeous white light entered the room.

It was reflecting off sparkling white rain.

Grandpa clutched his heart. He stood up without his cane. He couldn’t speak.

“It’s snowing,” he said at last.

Now it was Lucy’s turn to not be able to speak.

The elderly Haitian man now in his life known only as Papa walked stoutly to the windows, squarely five times his height. He placed a pale palm against the frigid glass.

“It’s a white Christmas, Lucy.” He began to weep while smiling. “I’ve asked Santa — for a white Christmas—- since I was— a little boy.”

Lucy looked at the beautiful man who had raised her, sometimes from near, sometimes from far. She began to know tears of joy, too.

“Merry Christmas, Papa.”

~~~

Savanna Rain Uland is normally a dark fantasy author, but hopes you enjoyed this competition piece.

www.savannarainuland.com