I thought of all the evenings I'd spent telling myself I should be able to solve a personal problem if I studied it carefully enough. Then I pulled the contract toward us and asked her to show me where she lost the meaning. We spent twenty minutes working through it together. At the end she thanked me for not making her feel foolish, and I was struck by how little effort kindness had required when neither person was trying to win.
In December Rachel mailed me a small package. It contained a photograph of my mother that had been tucked behind a frame Rachel took when she moved, and a handwritten note. She said she'd found it while unpacking and wanted to return it because it belonged with my family. She didn't use the note to ask how I was, explain her therapy, or remind me of a memory that might make me miss her. She simply said she was sorry the photograph had gotten mixed in with her things.
My mother was standing in the backyard of our childhood home in the photograph, wearing a yellow sweater and holding a birthday cake. I was twelve. Leah stood beside me with an expression of exaggerated patience, and Dad was partly visible at the edge of the frame, one hand lifted as though he were about to say something. It was one of the few pictures of all four of us from the years before the marriage ended.
I sent Rachel a text thanking her for returning it. She replied with a single sentence: I'm glad it found its way home. There was nothing more to say. I put the picture beside the wooden bird on my shelf and went to bed.
Around Christmas, Dad called and asked whether I wanted to come up for a few days. He didn't sound offended when I explained I had work until the afternoon before the holiday. He said he'd be pleased to see me whenever I could manage it and that Leah had already bought more food than the entire street could eat. I told him I'd arrive Christmas Eve. It felt good to make a promise I meant to keep without the fear that my inability to promise more would be treated as rejection.
The holiday wasn't idyllic. One of Leah's children developed a fever, a pipe in the basement made a worrying noise, and Dad became irritated when we insisted he rest between activities. I got short-tempered after too little sleep and apologized when I spoke sharply to Leah. We handled the minor crises as they arose, sometimes badly, sometimes with humor. Nobody threatened to leave the family because the day wasn't perfect.
Christmas morning, Dad gave me a small package wrapped in newspaper. Inside was a wooden star, carved carefully from oak, with a narrow hole near one point for a ribbon. He said he'd made one for each of the grandchildren and had nearly forgotten that I used to ask for one every year when I was a boy. I held it in my hand and remembered our old house with a paper angel leaning crookedly on top of the tree.