. 

I can't really talk about this year's Christmas shopping, because it's 
hardly begun (although I did make a rare find today-a book of Bulgarian 
poetry, which is on its way to my sister). And after I'd written this and 
read it, I wasn't going to send it. But shopping and gifts can wear many 
faces, and so I will. 

Christmas Shopping 

It was the first time I'd ever really had a man to shop for, and I took it 
seriously. He was a scientist, a professor at UIC, and he had the 
abstracted, raveled-at-the-sleeve look that I thought all professors had. 
And he could never seem to eat lunch at work, although he said his post-doc 
students and techs could always manage to scratch up something to eat over 
their burners if they didn't take time to go to the cafeteria. 

So I knew there was something he needed. I couldn't begin to guess at 
clothing; men's wear was foreign territory to me. My father had worn 
overalls and khaki work pants and shirts, and I had only the vaguest notion 
of dress shirts and neckties. But I knew there were things you could do 
with one burner, even a Bunsen burner, or no burner at all. I shopped 
gourmet counters for spreads and crackers, imported soup mixes that tasted 
real, cookies, a tea sampler, a mug. I browsed all of Carson's Scandinavian 
shop, breathing in warm and heady scents of oiled teak and candles, and 
came away with a Norwegian copper-clad tea kettle that had clean, 
functional lines as beautifully refined as any of the chemical ware in his 
lab. I pushed my fear of heights out of my head and crowded onto the 
Ravenswood el with all my packages and strap-hung my way home with the 
lumpy shopping bag weighing on one arm, my heavy shoulder bag hanging and 
swinging from the other. My feet were throbbing, because I wore heels, in 
those days, to shop downtown, and both arms felt sprung at the shoulders, 
and it was the most wonderful Christmas shopping I'd ever done. I was giddy 
with the pleasure of putting together something he really needed and could 
enjoy. 

He seemed pleased, and slightly embarrassed, at the big box I had conned 
out of the gift-wrap people at Carson's, and all the individually wrapped 
little packets inside. He admired the tea kettle and asked where I'd found 
it. He took the box to the lab. He mentioned, once or twice, the crackers 
and spreads. The sad stories of lunchless days stopped. I had the 
satisfaction of knowing that for once, I'd hit on the right kind of gift. 

Twenty-odd years later, he retired. By then, we'd been married many years, 
and I'd learned. I knew I would have to put lunch down in front of him and 
remind him to eat it. I knew that he would wear sweaters but not jackets; 
that I would have to make sure that the sweater of the day had no holes and 
that his collar was squared away with the neckline--not half in, half 
out--before he left the house; that if I wanted him to wear a clean shirt, 
I would have to snatch the dirty shirts off the hangers. The forgetfulness 
wasn't the sweet forgetfulness of the totally absorbed scientist, and it 
certainly wasn't senility. He expected that I would remember whatever 
needed remembering and take care of whatever needed care. Still, when he 
brought his personal belongings home from his office and lab, I felt as if 
the floor had dropped out from under me. Stuffed in a storage box, with his 
old lab coats, was the Norwegian copper kettle--pristine, free of scale, 
with not a water spot or a trace of carbon on it. A new kettle, never used. 
I put it in the cupboard over the stove, where it would be handy. It stayed 
there. 

When my husband died, more than two years ago, the copper kettle was still 
sitting in the cupboard. And when the lid of my old Finnish steel kettle 
finally fell apart, I left the copper kettle on its shelf and bought a 
forest green  whistling kettle from a housewares store--a new kettle with 
no history and a little bit of color and a whistle loud enough to catch my 
attention seemed like a good idea. But its welds were bad, and its life was 
short. It sprang an insidious leak from the inside, where a flaw near the 
spout had turned to a crater of rust. 

I took the copper kettle from the shelf. The first time I used it, I nearly 
sacrificed it--walked away from it and let it boil dry. It took the smell 
of hot metal to bring me back to the kitchen. The kettle looked bad. The 
copper was scorched, and fingers of heat stain had spread up the sides. I 
plucked it off the glowing coils with a potholder and moved it to a cold 
burner. Luckily, the handle hadn't warped or melted. When the metal cooled, 
I scrubbed it. And having rescued the kettle, I felt I could use it. It's 
always on my stove these days--wearing a few flecks, a few water spots. It 
doesn't look new any more and never will. But it belongs in this  kitchen. 
It catches the light, and the copper glows against the black enamel and 
matte aluminum of the new stove. It's my kettle now.