Page 2 – Cards
Eden can tell Abdiel doesn’t understand the point of mailing Christmas cards, but he goes along with it to humor her.
“Anyone special you want to send a one to?” she asks as they sit down to address and sign the assortment of brightly colored cards that she picked up.
“No one,” Abdiel tells her.
“No one at all?” Eden raises an eyebrow.
He shakes his head. “Not really.”
“Well, you have to send one to Kiyo,” Eden tells him. “And we should send one to Tobias too.”
“Why? We see them all the time. It doesn’t make that much sense to send them a letter that they won’t get until after the next time we’ve seen them.”
“That’s not what Christmas cards are about,” she says. She’s a bit worried that Abdiel will think that her explanation is over the top, but she makes the attempt anyway. “You send cards to family friends and people who care about you, just to let them know that you think about them during the holidays. It’s a small thing, but it lets them know that they matter.”
Abdiel smirks. “I don’t know, Sis. I spend a lot of time telling Tobias that he doesn’t matter. I’d hate to think of all that effort going to waste.”
Eden shrugs and holds up her favorite card in the pile. “I’m sending this one to Andre.”
Abdiel bursts out laughing at the image of a horrified looking gingerbread man with voodoo pins sticking out of him. “Wishing you lots of Christmas magic,” he reads out loud and laughs again. “That’s awesome.”
He eventually chooses a Christmas card for Tobias – or rather a politically correct holiday card (I wish you, with no obligation, implied or implicit, an enjoyable celebration of the winter solstice holiday, as practiced within the traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practice of your choice . . .). For Kiyo, he picks a card depicting an elf bound and gagged by tinsel, with the greeting written in cut out letters, like a ransom note.
It’s not an extremely significant event, but they have a good time, and that’s what matters the most. They’ve missed out on a lot, split up for thirteen years like they were. Abdiel was sad for so long – too long – and Eden thinks it’s about time they started making up for that. After all, everyone deserves a few good memories of Christmas.
