Disclaimer:  The story of Christy is owned by the LeSourd family.  I am 
writing this story for my amusement only.


Title:  Mirror Fic:Gifts (I hate this title, but work with me, people!)
Author: Regina


I kept looking at myself in the mirror, and it never got any better,
 no matter what angle I chose.  What was I going to do?  

It seemed no matter how well Neil bundled my hair into a braid before I went 
to bed,  it always came undone.  Arranging hair was just not a job that came 
naturally to my husband.  I tried to convince him that I had enough strength 
in my hands to perform the task myself, but he would just look at me with a 
mixture of love and stubbornness and put my hands back under the flannel 
blanket.   If I protested, he would admonish me to be a good girl and to that 
he knew best.  

"But I am a woman of sixty,"  I often replied, knowing that Neil would 
respond  exactly the way he always did to my objections.

"You are my girl of sixty and no matter how much you complain, you will obey 
doctor's orders."  Neil would then kiss me on my forehead lightly and reach 
for the book on the bedside table.  Sometimes, he read the Bible and 
punctuated the reading with events from our lives together.  When he read the 
Psalms about hardship, he would talk about our babies buried in the cemetery 
just over the hill from the mission house.  When he read Revelation and the 
promises about life to come, he would remind me that I could not do too many 
cartwheels in heaven because there might be traffic on the streets of gold.  
That always made me laugh.  And when he read the Song of Solomon, he would 
look at me the same way he did on our wedding day.  His hazel eyes would 
shine with the love that I have basked in for forty years and I would feel 
the warmth all the way in my fingertips.  

Neil had given his practice to John Spencer years before.  He had arranged 
everything, making several trips to Boston to make sure that the admissions 
process had gone smoothly, John would be taught by the best professors, and 
that he would be assisted if he fell behind.

When John came back to the Cove to practice, I had never seen my husband so 
moved.  It was as though the hardship that he had suffered when he chose to 
become a doctor had paved the way for John.  The feeling of being an outsider 
upon his return home, the trust that he had to win back, the doubts about his 
medical ability…All of these were crosses my husband had to bear.  It 
strengthened his heart to see that John did not have to endure the pain that 
he had.  

It had always made me proud that one of my students had chosen to study 
medicine.  I had thought it more of a tribute to Neil than an example of my 
fine teaching abilities.  I may have given John the educational foundation 
that he needed to get to medical school, but the passion that sustained him 
was a gift from my husband.  Neil had spent many hours with John, talking to 
him about the importance of being a doctor of the heart and not just of the 
body.  Those conversations used to go well into the night and I would get so 
impatient for Neil to come to bed that I would yell, "John Spencer, you had 
better get home to your wife before she comes looking for you!"  They always 
laughed when I did that, because they knew that the most annoyed wife was me, 
standing at the top of my stairs in my robe and slippers.

I put the mirror on the bedside table.  Neil would be back any minute.  He 
had told me that he was going outside to check on the vegetables in the 
garden, but I knew his real mission.  Today, it would be a bouquet of 
wildflowers.  When he really went outside just to check the garden, he just 
left, closing the door gently.

Since we married, he had played a little game.  He would announce that he was 
going to get vegetables and then bring back something entirely different.  It 
was always a token of affection-  a leaf from the tree we had sat under when 
we had our first picnic, a cup of clear water from the river which he said 
reminded him of the purity of our love, or a berries that were so sweet they 
melted in my mouth.

When I was carrying our first child, I had told him that I was going to check 
the vegetables in the garden.  Instead, I had brought him a huge round rock 
and told him that it looked exactly like my stomach would in eight months.  
He had lifted me off my feet, spun me around, and knelt in the ground to rest 
his head against my middle. The tears he shed that day were among my fondest 
memories.

I heard footsteps on the stairs.  Neil would be coming soon.  I would 
pretend, as I always did, to be surprised by the flowers.

The End!