by cheri sabraw
You will remember that I balked at spending $45.00 for a wire (gossamer light, I might add) gratitude sign that I had seen at Lily’s Coffee Shop.
At home with the joyous weekend now only a brief lighthearted memory, I returned to my routine of emptying the dishwasher, tending to my mother’s pharmaceutical needs, weeding, and checking the expiration date on the canned goods in my pantry. In each of these activities, I tried to lift myself emotionally from the banal tasks that they are.
If only I had that gratitude sign to remind me to be grateful every moment of my life, I thought, grateful for my memory, I’d pluck each mound of dog doo on the lawn–a testimony to Dinah’s exemplary intestinal tract and to the natural dog food at $53.00 per bag that one feeds a dog with serious food allergies–and fling it joyfully into the brambles that border our property. Yep, that’s how I would view canine defecation, if only I had that gratitude sign to remind me.
I decided to buy the sign and asked my brother (names have been changed to protect the guilty) Eric and his wife of one year, Anika, to purchase it for me while they were staying at our little house on the central coast. I neglected to tell them to take the sign home with them, as I planned to hang it here, in my home in the Bay Area, where daily, I need to be reminded to be grateful.
Eric and Anika bought the sign which Lily gingerly wrapped in white tissue, tucking it into a light brown gift bag. This bag, they left on the bar in my little home.
Meanwhile, my brother’s ex-wife Lenore e-mailed me to ask if her sister, Lenette and her husband David–visiting from New York City–could stay at the little house on their way from Los Angeles to the wine country of Napa-Sonoma.
“Sure, no problem,” I said, but thought now I need to contact Grace, my cleaning lady, to come on Monday (instead of Tuesday), since Lenette and David would arrive on the Tuesday afternoon following my brother and his new wife’s stay.
Grace cleaned, Lenette and David visited and left, and the Judge and I drove down the following weekend, with Dinah grateful to be included in the trip, wagging her tail merrily like a rear windshield wiper. I was pensive. Would a gratitude sign and the visual reminder provided by it, be enough to lift me from the selfishness I experience when asked to pick up razor blades at CVS pharmacy, stop at McIvor’s Hardware Store and buy caulking, and provide a nutritious dinner each night for a hard-working husband?
I dearly hoped so.
We arrived at the little house very late, past midnight. There on the counter were thank-you gifts (expressing gratitude) from Eric and Anika (a bottle of Absolute Vodka for the Judge) with lovely note and a dark gorgeously labeled bottle of Opolo wine (Sangiovese) from my ex-sister-in-law Lenore’s sister and her husband, Lenette and David, with an accompanying little card.
Great. How sweet. But I was looking for my gratitude sign, supposedly left in the cubbyhole by the bar, as reported by my brother and his new wife, Anika. No bag, no tissue, no nothing. My gratitude sign was nowhere to be found.
That night, long after the Judge had retired to our bedroom (doing so after his customary vanilla ice cream aperitif) and covering his tired eyes with a sensuous lavender eye-pillow, I–like a ferret–searched and searched through cupboards and drawers for the sign which must have been left somewhere, damn it!
Alas, the gratitude sign was gone. Who took it?
I gave up my search, like a failed old bloodhound, and crawled into the bed, next to the Judge, who would be certain– the next morning while sipping his coffee and noshing on a cinnamon roll–to render his opinion on probable whereabouts (or not) of the sign.
Did Erik and Anika actually buy the gratitude sign, for which I had already written them a $45.00 check?
What about my ex-sister-in-law Lenore?
What about her NYC sister Lenette and her suave and talented husband David?
What about Grace?
What about Gratitude?
What?
Oh, so fun to read…a joy on a crisp, sunny Sunday morning…..I love a good mystery series!!!
Yes, very fun to read! Can’t wait for part three…
Now I get the previous title, you clever gal… Where has Gratitude Gone? ;0
Thanks Rosemary and dafna! Fun to write, as well. Without readers like you two, I may not be writing for my blog anymore. I appreciate the positive feedback. The story continues…later on this week, I hope. Big assignment at school on Tuesday night.
Fun reading! It will be interesting to find out who is responsible for the “removal” of your Gratitude sign. I suspect the culprits are your brother Steve and his wife. It appears you do too due to the fact you stated in your blog their “names have been changed to protect the guilty.” I think they liked the sign so much they decided to take it home with them in order to admire it and use its inspirational message for a time, and they will then return it to you in the form a Xmas present!
Thank you, Joan. I was hoping that readers would begin to speculate about the end result of this weird mystery. You are the first to weigh in. So, you think that my brother Eric and his wife Anika took it, right? I especially like your clever solution.
If Glenys were to hang a reminder to herself at the end of the bed reading
BE THANKFUL FOR SMALL MERCIES
I also might have cause to ponder.
And Sir Richard, what would you be pondering?
I was in the brambles looking for clues.
This tale has supernatural overtones. I just feel it.
Believe me, Christopher, I too (until a week ago) felt supernatural overtones, so you are in good company.
I think the universe is trying to tell you something. Listen.
I have my ear to the ground, Thomas.
Call Poirot!
I have considered doing so, Inpector Paul, but would need you and Therese to interpret. Are you coming?
Sure and no fees, however Poirot is thouroughly anglophone born as he was in Agatha Christie land.
I believe it was Lynette & David who took your eagerly-awaited “Gratitude” momento, thinking it was all wrapped up….just for them!!!!!
They thought it was a little wrapped-up giftie for them….
And Cherie…you are our tiny splice-of-life “Erma Bombeck-ish” morning delight ….stay with it!!! We love it!!!
I didn’t know canned goods had expiration dates. I thought the whole point of canning was to protect the contents from the ravages of time.
All the can were facing the front. Hence the anxiety state and the confusion.
True friends stab you in the front.
Only if you’re wild.
I canned take it anymore.
So Richard really virtually canned you Cyber.
There is no other option – you’ll have to go to Capa-Sonoma.
Sleep was impossible. Cheri tossed and turned and finally made up her mind. Quietly so as not to disturb TGJ she slipped out of bed, dressed, packed a few essentials – a bottle of cuticle remover, a dead duck.and a replica of the gift bag – collected Dinah from the kennel and set off in the tractor.
As she drove eastward, a mile of traffic behind her, she began to ponder. Where would she start? Well, first she would buy a bottle of wine, then find lodgings, then feed Dinah, then drink the wine then try the lost property office at the airport.
Cherii strode determinedly towards the lost property desk, her hat fastened lethally with a pin, Dinah wheezing behind her.
“Have you seen this before?”
“Get in the queue, ma’am. It’s regulations.” He pointed over her shoulder.
Cheri turned round wearily. There, laid out in a long row was a line of chairs painted all colours of the rainbow. All were unoccupied except one. To her horror, there, in the red chair at one end, sat the female she saw at Los Angeles airport. Hardly concealing her revulsion, she sat beside her in the orange chair, gripping tightly on Dinah’s lead.
She glanced again at those bulging jeans. She became transfixed in disbelief. She looked again. Yes, sticking out ot the jeans, pressing deep into the folds of flesh around the girl’s waist were the letters “GR” finely fashioned in gossamer wire.
Stuffing the replica gift bag she had produced at the desk into her pocket, she rose to the full height of of her school mistress authority.
“Where did you get that?”
“What?”
“That.”
“Oh, this!” The girl drew out from her jeans the letters “GRA” and the broken stub of another letter. “I found it on the floor.”
Cheri marched the girl to the desk. The clerk’s.eyes riveted on the object.
“I’ve had an enquiry from Eurpoe about that.” He poked at his keyboard and moved his hand towards the “G”. Cheri snatched the broken treasure away.
“Where in Europe?” she demanded.
My my,Richard. You have reached back…far into my earlier writings… to piece together clues and create your own end to this story.
I am very far away from my home..in a paradise really…and will finish the ending to this story soon.
The dead duck…the cuticle remover…the tractor…Richard, your memory amazes, Sir.
9th October. Just checking.
You are correct. I’m a classic Libra, not anywhere near a cusp.
Don’t we all have some of the supposed characteristics of every star sign?
The clerk stiffened with indignation. He looked his customer up and down slowly.
“”Guess you fit the description. ID. Sign here.”
Cheri grasped the brown gift bag he handed to her and peered inside. Yes – TITUDE, all in light gossamer wire. But there was something else. She shook the bag. Something heavy. She looked again. There lay a bloody foreign toe. She was over the moon. She reached in, Dinah sniffed.
“There you are – good dog!” Dinah yaffled it up.
The girl had by now escaped.
Cheri took the two halves of the sign to the man with the auger, who swiftly restored it to its former splendour. It now hangs proudly on the wall and every morning, when they awaken, TGJ and Cheri look at it, then at each other, and smile in contentment – as if in paradise.
Oh, this is a fantasy story of yours Richard. It is true that Dinah will eat anything, but I’m not sure about human body parts. We know she will eat rats, squirrels, and birds, but a foreigh (of all things) toe?
Fantasy? Fantasy story? Do you realise what you are saying? I have all the evidence right here fully referenced and docketed.
I know what put you off. It’s the happy ending, isn’t it.
Yes, but I do appreciate your working your mind to the bone and trying to solve the whereabouts of the missing Gratitude sign.
There is something earnest about your version of the story.
My version? I’ll write it within a week.
A whodunnit? Now she tells me. And one it takes the author a week to solve!
There’s something patronisingly condescending about imagenmots’ comment below. If you are in any doubt about the perpetrator of this heinous crime, I suggest you ask him to ask Paul.
loving this, everyone…my morning chuckle!!!
Two great minds in a game of wit, truly fascinating.
J’adore les mots en francais….!!!
TGT and TGL looked at each other again. He knew that determined cast in her eye and that the hat was within easy reach. She had not finished with the case. Yes, have a house party. Yes, ask who she wants. Yes, she would be proved right yet again.
Now it is an enviable thing to be invited to the Rancho. A matter of pride on your social calendar. So all the RSVPs were positive.
After a sumptuous meal of miner’s lettuce with Chateau de Plonc, they all gathered in the drawing room, parading their finery, each engaged according to their order of peck.. There hung, temporarily, the gossamer sign in all its manuscript magnificence.
TGJ pointed.
“Again my dear wife has demonstrated her unassailable taste and acquired a reminder of the blessings we all take so much for granted in this modern day and age.”
There was a hush. Without loss of continuity, TGT addressed the assembled suspects.
“You must all know by now why it is I have invited you. There is one and one only of you responsible for the desecration of this writing on the wall and the expense of its recovery and restoration.
“Grace. What were you doing behind the bar that Monday? You well know that TGJ allows no-one there except on my instructions, including him. And yet I found this duster …” Cheri waved it with a flourish, “ … in the place where I expected to find my purchase.
“And Eric and Anika – your finances are sorely stretched by an exorbitant order for alimony and you must have been tempted to convert my check to your own use.”
She turned to her ex sister-in-law.
“What sort of gratitude was that after I had magnanimously acceded to your request for accommodation? The three of you had conspired to spy on Eric for financial advantage, only he had already left, hadn’t he?
She spoke softly to Grace.
“Behind the bar was a deposit, wasn’t there, and not a monetary one. Your honesty cannot usually be questioned. Your thoroughness demanded attention to Dinah’s oversight. You grabbed the white tissue you saw and pulled. The sign dropped to the floor with a tinkle and the bag floated after it. You panicked. With one hand you gathered the excrement with the tissue and replaced the sign in the bag with the other, which you carelessly left in the porch. There was no need to come all the way here to throw me off the scent. Anyway, Richard found the parcel in the brambles.”
Speaking again to the conspirators, she was dismissive.
“Relax. There is no room in your selfish lives for gratitude.”
There was a rustling and a commotion at the door.
“Stop her!”
Eric stepped forward and barred a woman’s way.
“Did you really think I would be duped by that transparent alias?” said Cheri, “you sought to create differences between me and TGJ. Well, it didn’t work.” Ms Feeley-For-Man wrote out a check, signed it, left it on the table and slunk away,”
Cheri then turned to the other guests.
RFF took the sign from the porch and hoped to get away unnoticed. She devised an elaborate cover-up, hoping to place the blame on Eric while he was in Europe by faking that enquiry to the lost property office. Little did she know that a hapless English tourist would cut his toe off when he trod on the ‘A’ after she had deliberately dropped the sign on the floor. It was he who handed that and the final six letters to the clerk. RFF had no option but to hand the first two letters in as well.
That night, TGJ and TGT snuggled up together, the sign hanging on the wall in all its gossamer glory, the moon reflected in the three centre letters. They sighed in unison. Dinah buried a small object in the brambles and barked in satisfaction..
My word, Richard is contaminated by Agatha’s Poirot and Miss Marple. However he resides not in London nor in St-Mary-le-Mead.
We now have another famous detective: Sir Richard Manchester.
Cheri, the end of your saga is much compromised now unless you come up with something truly outstanding.
Sir Richard has truly outdone himself with his version of Where is Gratitude. The attention to detail, from the duster to Dinah, from TGJ to TGT, speaks of his intelligence, British humour, and years of legal service to those like TGT, Anika, Lenore, Lenette, and Grace. He writes from experience, I can see. Bringing RFF into the story was a touch of brilliance. I had never considered that Rosemary might be part of the solution.
Paul, you are absolutely correct in that I will be stretched mightily to compete with this ditty. However, what you forget is that my story is true. I do know, now, what happened to the Gratitude sign. The true story will be told (after I finish this Mai Tai and take my bathing suit off).
tooooooooo funny! You need a Reality Show!!!
Oh Mon Dieu!
Moi???!!! Je suis innocent!!
Rosemary, qui vous a accusée? Ma grand-mère disait:” La première poule qui chante est celle qui pond”. Mais Cheri vient de vous innocenter…du moins je le crois?.
C’etait Richard!!!!!
…mais, je me sens “relieved” et “exonerated”….lol! Et, pardonez-moi, je ne suis une poule!!!!! (rires grands)…
Non, non. Paul, il est le clerc a l’airport. Il a dans son bureau les letters VIA est il a besoin de GRA, mais Cheri etais trop quick. Vous savez this.
Good grief, Richard, Cheri is not trop quick, otherwise nous connaîtrions the end of l’histoire déjà.. She just let nous mijoter in our jus. Elle enjoy notre suffering.
Laughing…. I think she should tell us all in person… Avec du vin !!!
The Rancho is a tad far from Montreal, but I would share anyway through the virtual reality of the Web.
Hello Readers,
I accidentally hit the publish button instead of the save button. Please ignore that previous postito.
What about the Judge? Is he grateful? Maybe he’s grateful enough for two. Or, maybe you’re trying to compensate for his lack of gratitude. The Judge and I were just about to staple a target to the back of your gratitude when…
He is grateful enough for two. You hit it.
And yes, you must come for our annual Turkey Shoot on Thanksgiving morning (sure bring our friend A and family) when our dear friends come for Bloody Mary’s, cinnamon rolls, some fruit, but mainly for the shoot. Targets, that is. Lots of gunfire for about 4 hours. There is a winner.
The winner expresses gratitude.
I don’t shoot.
At least I didn’t, until The Judge bought me a Remington 20 gauge shotgun for the holidays.
Now, I shoot. Ka-chunk, Ka-chunk.
It’s impressive.
http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/s320x320/417266_205649022867994_140181749414722_268351_1971011578_n.jpg
not sure that will open…but try…
It opens! Leave it to a dog to “get it.”
Still no time to write the final installment.
Yes, it does open. It makes you feel snoopy.
J’embrasse mon chien sur la bouche…….just saying’ !