Grandma's Gift Exchange: A Left Right Story

Every Christmas, the whole Brennan family crams right into Grandma Bev's house for the gift exchange. There are thirty-one of them. The house has two bathrooms and one working outlet, on the left wall of the living room. Grandma Bev sits in the green recliner on the right side of the fireplace, and from that chair she runs the whole evening like an air traffic controller.

Grandma Bev has rules. The limit is twenty-five dollars, and she means it right down to the penny. No gift cards, because "a gift card is just money that's embarrassed." Gifts go on the card table on the left. Coats go on the bed in the back bedroom, the one on the right. Shoes come off right at the door, and if you leave them on the left side of the hallway, she will put them in the garage and you will find them in March.

Uncle Dale breaks the rules left and right. He never has, not since the left-handed scissors incident of 1979. Every year Uncle Dale brings something that is very clearly more than twenty-five dollars, like a drone or a foot spa, and every year he says, "I got a deal," and every year Grandma Bev says, "Right." This year he came in with a box so big he had to turn sideways, left shoulder first, and he set it down right on top of everybody else's gifts.

Grandma Bev looked at the box from her chair, left eyebrow up. "Dale," she said. "Right here. Now." Dale walked over to the right side of the fireplace like a kid called to the principal's office. He is fifty-eight years old.

Meanwhile, the teenagers were in the corner on the left, on their phones. Grandma Bev has a rule about phones too, and the rule is a basket, and the basket was right there by the door. She sent Grandpa Walt, who was sitting right beside her, to collect them. Grandpa Walt walked left, stopped, forgot what he'd gone over there for, and came right back with a cookie.

Great-Grandma Edna, who is ninety-six, was on the couch between a cousin on her left and a cousin on her right, with her purse on her left knee and her hearing aids in the purse. She doesn't need them, she says. She hears just fine, she says, when people are talking about the right things. When someone on her left asked if she wanted coffee, she said, "What?" When someone on her right whispered that Dale had brought another drone, she said, "Again?"

The babies were on a blanket in the middle of the floor. There were four of them this year, two on the left and two on the right, and nobody was completely sure which baby belonged to which cousin. The babies seemed all right with that. One was chewing on the TV remote, right on the power button. One was chewing on the left shoe of somebody's new boyfriend, who had not been told about the shoe rule.

At seven o'clock, Grandma Bev clapped twice. All thirty-one people stopped talking right away, including two who were in the bathroom. "Everybody grab a gift and make a circle," she said. "We are doing this the right way." The right way is Grandma Bev's way.

It took nineteen minutes to get thirty-one people into a circle in a living room built for eight. The circle went right through the kitchen, left around the dining table, and partway down the hall to the left. Uncle Dale's box didn't fit anywhere, so Dale stood in the doorway on the right, holding it. He couldn't see left or right. He said it was worth it.

"When I say left, you pass left," said Grandma Bev. "When I say right, you pass right. Walt, that means you too." Grandpa Walt said he knew left from right, thank you. Then he passed his gift left. She hadn't said anything yet. "Walt." He passed it right back.

So they started. Left. Gifts moved. Right. Gifts moved back. Left, left. Right, right. The babies weren't passing anything, but one of them crawled left with the remote, and three cousins passed their gifts to the baby anyway, and now the baby had four gifts and a remote and was thrilled about it.

Right. The teenagers passed right and looked up from their phones for the first time all night. Left. Great-Grandma Edna passed left, then left again, then decided the one she had was just right and put it in her purse with her hearing aids. Nobody argued. Nobody ever argues with Edna. "Right," said Grandma Bev, and the gifts kept going.

Uncle Dale's box went right, very slowly, because it took two people to lift it. Then it went left, because Grandma Bev said left on purpose. Then right. Then left. Then right again. Uncle Dale was sweating. Left. Right. Left. Grandma Bev was smiling. Everyone agreed she was doing it on purpose.

"Last one," said Grandma Bev. Everybody held their breath. Uncle Dale held his box with both arms, left and right. The baby held the remote. "Left," she said, and thirty-one gifts moved one more time, and the big box landed, at last, right in Grandma Bev's lap.

She opened it. It was a recliner. A brand-new green recliner, exactly like hers but without the spot on the left arm where Grandpa Walt spilled gravy in 1994. Grandma Bev looked left at Dale for a long time. "That is more than twenty-five dollars," she said. "You're right, Ma," said Dale. "Merry Christmas."

And that's the end of the story, and the end of the passing. Whatever you're holding right now is yours. If it's a recliner, please let Grandma Bev know.