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It's the holiday season, and the yellow beret fanatic described in the first post of this thread is at it again!
The first Christmas after my grandmother died, her Pagan poet husband gave us all the same thing: a bronze-ish candle stand, about a foot tall, stylized to appear as if three abstract female figures were holding up the main plate for the candle. This was supposed to represent "the three Marys" who had departed from us: the mother, the lover, and the goddess, or some shit like that. It was from a poem he wrote and read at her funeral; I wasn't really listening.
So anyway, three years later, he emails me this morning to RSVP for our family Christmas gathering, and lets me know that he hopes to be bringing a guest, some hippie 60-year-old that he thinks he is wooing. Sure, whatever. But then he tells me that it has occurred to him that the candle holder was not really a suitable present for my daughter, and that he would like to buy it back from me for $40 (twice what he paid for it, so a great deal for me!) and replace it with something better for "the child," whatever I might choose.
1.) I am certain that he didn't give it to my daughter, because if he had, he would have also given one to my son, and I would have had three of these stupid things floating around the house instead of just one. As it is, I actually have zero, because I gave mine to Goodwill shortly after receiving it.
2.) The reason he wants to buy it back from me is because he plans to give it to the woman he is quasi-dating, and was dismayed to learn that the store he bought them from no longer carries them.
I am glad he shared item number 2 with me, because aside from the humor value, it gives me a chance to explain to him that his new girlfriend certainly does not want a poignant symbol of his late wife, which will hopefully deflect from the fact that I tossed it years ago.
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