From the Vault: Gift Exchange

By Eilene Lyon

Chances are if you belong to any sort of club that you’ve participated in a holiday gift exchange. Perhaps a white elephant gift from deep in your closet, or maybe an inexpensive gift based on a given theme. This week, one of my book clubs swapped gifts based on the books we read this year.

Back in the early 1990s, I belonged to an investment club (all the rage then), called Durango Gold Diggers. One December, I wound up with this nattily-dressed frog carrying a scroll. He was a contribution from club member, Dee McAliney. Based on the poem in the scroll, I take it a wine bottle filled with M&Ms accompanied Mr. Frog.

Sadly, Dee, as with other members of the Gold Diggers, has “gone to her reward.” She left town not long after the club disbanded. Many years later, she returned. We had a chance meeting and kindled a close friendship. She was surprised to learn I still had the gift exchange frog.

Dee turned her creative attention to paper arts, primarily intricate cut-outs, sometimes on patterned backgrounds, and always with her own professional framing. I have a few hanging in my home, but they are far from her most elaborate pieces.

We talked about writing, painting, and other arts. She framed several watercolors for me—her eye for mats and frames unfailingly bringing out the best in the images. We got together at least once or twice a month.

It was after I got out of the hospital from having knee replacement surgery in December 2019 that I followed up on unanswered texts and emails to Dee. I called her number and got a disconnect message. I phone a mutual friend and learned about Dee’s heart attack. It crushed me to find out she was so suddenly gone. A creative light extinguished.

But her scroll lives on, silly as it may be: