Insane Deal on a Peacock Jacket

This is a story about how dangerous it is as we get older to purchase things ahead of time and hide them, and also of how a message gets changed as it gets passed on.

When my husband and I were out shopping, for his birthday, actually, we ran across a display of colorful jackets.  The tags on them said, "Insane deal!"  We just didn't know yet how insane it would turn out to be.

I admired the jackets.  I couldn't help it.  Paul held out a dark peacock one. I drooled over the lime.

"This is a nice color," he said.

"Yes, but fall's coming," I responded.  I was fixated on how many pairs of brown pants I suddenly seemed to have, and how nice it would be to have something other than brown to wear with them.

And Paul was right about the peacock.

Because I hesitated over both, my generous husband suggested we get both.  I didn't want to spend that much money on myself at that time.  It was, after all, about to be his birthday, not mine.  He offered to give me one of them for my birthday, some weeks hence.  I agreed, and both jackets were purchased.

I put away the things we'd bought for him, leaving the bag with my peacock jacket out for him to deal with, as it wasn't officially mine yet.

Fast forward to just before my birthday.  Saturday evening, I was wondering what to wear to church the next day, and I remembered the peacock jacket.  I reasoned that, since we would be celebrating my birthday Sunday evening, maybe I could get Paul to give me the jacket in time to wear it to church.  I looked around for it a little where I'd last seen it, but there was nothing there.  Clearly, he'd taken care of it.

When he got home from work and we were talking, somehow this came up.  I mentioned I would like to wear the peacock jacket to church, if possible.  He got a funny look on his face.

He started looking for it, searching for it, hunting for it.  He couldn't remember where he'd put it, or if he'd put it anywhere.  I helped him look, and I told him it didn't matter--I could easily wear something else.  In fact, I got out a beautiful red silk blouse I'd gotten handed down from my sister and hung it on the dresser.

Anguished at the thought of disappointing me, though, Paul scoured the closet (three times), the garage (twice), the basement, the china closet, even the furnace room.  He mentioned it might be in someone else's closet.

That didn't make a lot of sense to me.  But, then, I wasn't the one who had hidden it, so what did I know?

He didn't want to wake the children, so he didn't venture into their rooms to search their closets, but he couldn't seem to stop hunting.  He wouldn't take my reassurances.  I have been too mean to him about other things, I suppose.

"I have no memory of what I did with it," he admitted.  This didn't help me much.  It either meant he had not been the one to move it, or he just couldn't recall what he'd done with it.

We did look in the smallest children's closets, to no avail.  Paul was still searching, and my heart went out to him.  Plus, my heart was set on wearing that jacket if it could be found, even though I knew I could content myself with something else.  So, I said a quick prayer, thinking how foolish a concern about a peacock jacket must seem to God, who has so much else to worry about.

I went to find Paul.  He was in the family room, looking in cabinets.  Maybe, I said to him, our teenaged daughter had thought it was for her and had taken it.  It is, after all, in one of the few colors she is allowed to wear to school.

"I thought the same thing," he said.

That clinched it for me.  If he'd thought it and I had also thought it right after praying, it had to be the answer.  After all, when we are both on the same wave length, we have the ability to say, at the exact same time, and at the exact same speed, "That's a load of hay!" as a trailer loaded with hay has just passed us on the freeway, just as though we had opened our own mouths and heard the other's voice come out.

I opened my daughter's door and went to her closet.  I fingered the first item hanging in her closet--what was up next for her to wear--and at first thought, no.  Then I felt the sleeve, which was gathered at the end.  That was it!  I pulled it out and showed it to Paul.  It still had the tags on it.

We quietly hurried back to our room. 

"I wonder what she thought?" I said.  It wouldn't be like her to just assume something was hers and take it.  I couldn't wait to hear her side of the story.  But, I had to wait, till morning.  I hung the peacock jacket on my dresser and put the red silk blouse back into the closet.

Morning came, and I approached my tall, sleepy daughter.  "Do you remember this jacket?" I asked her, gently.

She did.

"What do you know about it?"

She said her sister had brought it to her, saying it was for her.  She had hung it up.  I told her what it had been intended for, and she accepted that with her usual grace.  We laughed about how funny it would have been for me to just see her in it, or find it in the laundry.

So, we asked her sister for her side of the story.  "Dad told me to put it in her closet," she said.

Then Paul remembered having handed it to her with those quick instructions in a hurried, off-handed moment, to keep it from being crumpled in the bag.  Which was really nice, because I could just put it on and wear it to church, with a multi-layered smile.