THE PERFECT GIFT

We all get them—those annoying gifts that fail to please. Around this time of the year, most of you would probably have already taken your unsuitable Christmas gifts back to the store they came from and swapped them for something suitable, something that fits, something that works. Perhaps you’ve passed them along to someone else or just packed them away—maybe one day you’ll find a use for them.

The week after Christmas already saw me back at the mall, exchanging the hotbrush my husband bought me. I’d been anxiously waiting for this gift I suspected I’d be getting. Far too many bad hair days had passed since my current hotbrush finally refused to work. I was told not to buy a new one yet, to just wait. Imagine my disappointment when the well-known brand hubby bought was a bad design. No locking mechanism to hold the brush onto the handle resulted in the brush falling off the handle every time I curled my hair around the bristles. It only took a few tries to realize this would not work. And so, a few days after receiving this gift, back it went. I promptly bought the familiar brand that had served me well for many years.

But I did receive a perfect gift this Christmas, although it wasn’t actually a Christmas gift. When we opened our gifts on Christmas Eve, my son pulled a fairly large wrapped box from under the tree. It had been placed there along with a myriad of other brightly wrapped boxes and gift bags. He handed it to me, and told me it was from his in-laws in Finland. I initially thought it was a Christmas gift. But when I began to unwrap it a little later while wading through my mound of gifts, my daughter-in-law painted an entirely different picture about this gift.

“That’s a ‘congratulations on being published’ gift from my mother and father,” Tiia said. I unwrapped the box and held my breath as I opened the lid. What was inside?

The box housed the perfect gift from my new Finnish family. But before I tell you what it is, I need to give you a quick insight as to why this gift was so perfect.

My novelette that has just been contracted by Pelican Book Group (White Rose Publishing), is set in Helsinki, Finland. It’s titled, Blueberry Eve, and of course, just like Finland, there’s loads of blueberries in the offering.

So, back to the gift. Inside the box lay a beautiful porcelain bowl molded in the shape of Finland. It was filled with blueberry chocolates.

The paper map beneath the chocolates pinpointed major cities and gave some interesting statistics about Finland.

Now isn’t that a perfect gift for this special occasion?

Once Blueberry Eve is published, it’s my hope that readers will savor every word of this fun, romance novelette, just like I’m savoring every chocolate inside my new, special bowl. And, of course, that my words will be just as sweet.

What about you? What perfect gifts have you received? It would be fun to hear about those disastrous ones, too.

Marion Ueckermann’s passion for writing was sparked in 2001 when she moved to Ireland with her husband and two sons. Since then she has published devotional articles and stories in Winners (2009), The One Year Devotional of Joy and Laughter (published August 2011 by Tyndale House Publishers) and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Miraculous Messages from Heaven (published 15 October 2013). She has just signed a publishing contract with Pelican Group Publishers (White Rose Publishing) for her novelette, Blueberry Eve. Marion blogs for International Christian Fiction Writers and belongs to Christian Writers of South Africa and American Christian Fiction Writers. She now lives in Pretoria East, South Africa in an empty nest with her husband and their crazy black Scottie, Wally.