The Gift

Dear Diary,

I was checking out Nani’s attic last week. I’d been dying to do that since I was a kid. It’s been 15 years, we’re still not allowed up there. Everyone was busy celebrating Nani’s 80^th birthday; I was dying of curiosity, so this was the perfect opportunity. I excused myself on the pretext of needing more cake and then tiptoed up the ladder in the kitchen.

Suddenly I felt someone grab my leg and screamed loudly,”AAAARGH!!!”

Well, that’s what I meant to sound like, but all I did was give out a silent scream. I looked down in terror only to find my elder sister laughing at me.

“What’s your problem?” I demanded of her grumpily. Scary sister.

“You think you’re the only one who wants to know what’s up there?” she asked me, smiled mischievously and nudged my foot.

“Climb up the ladder quickly. We don’t wanna be found out now, do we?”

She did have a point there, so I complied.

The door to the attic was very clean, which was not surprising since Nani is a cleanliness freak. I pushed it open and we climbed in. Well-oiled hinges, no cobwebs, no dust. Thank god.

“I wonder how she keeps everything so clean at her age.” My sister thought out loud, mirroring my sentiments.

I said “House-elves, maybe?”

We snickered, then shushed each other and looked around.

Everything was either covered with old bedsheets, or was in a bag. The only thing we could easily make out was a well-polished jewelry box made of silver. So well-polished, it looked brand new. My sister and I looked at each other at the same time, then at the box, then at each other again, and made a run for it. She was faster, so I cursed my weight genes and reached it only a split second after she did. We wrestled for it for a minute, and my sharp nails won.

I was about to open it when Nani climbed into the attic, yelled at us, grabbed the box from my hands and kicked us out.

Bit of an anticlimax, really.

Except that a week later, today morning, I woke up to find on my study table a small silver box similar to the one we found at Nani’s. Turns out my sister had the same gift on her table. I woke her up, and we decided to open our boxes together.

There was a small letter inside the box that said “ It’s time you kids had a gift similar to what my Nani gave me when she was my age. You don’t need a reason to buy trinkets; you just need amazing granddaughters to give them to.

Lots of love,

Nani.

P.S: Stay out of my attic.”

We laughed and looked in our boxes again. Inside my box was a beautiful pair of dangly silver earrings with purple colored stones embedded in the twists and turns. The earrings themselves looked like a trident, the symbol of psychology. Nani always knew what I liked. I put them on and they looked amazing.

My sister’s pair had black stones in them and was shaped to look like a pair of DNA strands woven in a loop. Just what my sister liked.

Nani always gave us the perfect gift.

Well, that’s about it dear diary. I’ll write again, as soon as I have another happy memory to add.