The Gift

The old lady places her shawl on top of the bedside table and opens the door below. She removes two brightly colored doilies, which she has painfully knitted over the course of two weeks. She holds them with long fingers, gnarled with age. She has made them for the redheaded girl who comes to clean her room.

The old lady has come to anticipate the sounds of the girl's cleaning cart coming down the hall. The girl is friendly and the old dear loves to hear her talk of her daughter and her life as she bustles around the room, making the bed and cleaning the floor. They have a special relationship, these two. The old lady loves to talk of times past; she loves the way her stories fall on rapt ears and the way she feels when the girl sits down just to listen to her and her tales. The ghosts of memory also come with these visits, and they leave their little stamps of love and longing, but she would not change a thing. These daily meetings with this girl have given her a way to bring lost friends and family to life. The two exchange secrets and tips, and when something happens in the ward, the old lady can’t wait to tell her special friend.

So she gives the girl the only thing she can, to show how much all this means. "I hope you like them," she says uncertainly as she hands the doilies over with shaking hands. The girl, choked up, says, "Of course I do, silly." Tears well up in the cleaners eyes, as she can see the obvious effort it must have taken the old girl to make these beautifully colored pieces with such terrible arthritis. The girl thinks, to herself, that this is what makes her job so worthwhile.

The cleaner moves on to the next room with more tears in her eyes and the doilies in her purse. The shift has just begun, and there are still 22 rooms to clean.