Leather Gloves

The wind bit our red cheeks as we shuffled our shivering legs towards the warmth of a brightly lit mall. Checking our watch constantly, we rushed through the chilly January traffic. The soft snowflakes fluttered down from a light grey sky, swirling into a distasteful glop as it landed on the busy road. Fighting the bitter winter wind we stomped inside the store blowing in tufts of snow. Inside was a quiet him, peaceful and pleasant as people milled around aimlessly.

Yet we were set with a purpose. We marched towards the stairs, snow melting off of our faux fur lined jackets, dampening them. The pleasantly occupied mall passed as a blur, our eyes focusing on one store in particular.

It was my father's birthday that day and my sister and I set out, with money in our pockets and a single goal; to purchase a gift. Ever since Christmas, when my father dropped the fact that his old leather gloves has seen better day, we knew we had the perfect gift idea. Yet Christmas came and passed, and we had not sought out after the prized gloves. It was a mix between laziness and confusion. We never really bought our parents a gift, we usually wrote them a card or went to buy some form of food, always in their presence. This time we wanted our gift to be a surprise.

We decided on a date, to go get our farther a gift. Giddy with excitement, we envisioned or father's face when he would see the present. And with a sinking feeling, we realized we didn't know how large his hands were. His worn and flaking gloves were usually worn whenever our father left the house. 

And so we got our mother in the plan. Our house was under renovations, and my father, along with my mother needed to head out to buy laminate flooring. She would, when they left the hardware store, call us and warn us of their return. With a shocking, yet welcome surprise, my sister discovered that my father had brought in his gloves for the day. Quickly hiding the gloves deep in the recess of the closet, we constantly dropped hints to our farther to leave the house.

"Aren't you suppose to go buy flooring?" I asked innocently while observing the passive form of my father as he surfed the web.

"Uh huh," he replied absentmindedly.

Finally, after much wheedling from our mom, he relented and went down to take his coat. My sister and I watched from our peripheral vision as my father put on his hat. About to leave, he suddenly spun around, remembering to bring something.

"Can you pass me my gloves, they should me in my bag," my father called out from the door.

With a sinking feeling my sister put on a show as she rummaged through his thick bag.

"I don't see them," she declared, acting surprised at the absence of the gloves.

Sighing, my dad shrugged off his coat to search the bag himself. Finding no trace of them, he proceeded to look in his coat pockets.

"Maybe it's in the closet," my sister suggested as my dad searched around the living room. We realized that he would not leave without the gloves

"No, they wouldn't be, I did not put them there," he replied, as he bent over to check under the couch.

"Oh I saw mom putting them away in the closet," my sister persisted, already opening the door.

Uttering a fake exclaim of surprise and triumph, she pulled out the pair of worn gloves. With my father gone now, we were presented with another problem, we did not know his hand size anymore.

We entered the store anyways, where a cheery saleswoman asked if we needed assistance. Directing is towards the glove section, we stared at the large assortment.

"So," I began, testing a glove on, "How do we do this?"

With a smug smile, my sister looked over the gloves.

As she had handed over the gloves to my father a little while earlier, she had proceeded in measuring the size of the glove in relation to her own hand.

At the store she began planning her hand onto of the different sizes, estimating his approximate hand size. Pulling around different gloves, we searched for a right style.

Again, we did not know his preference on color or shape, so we opted to get him similar gloves to the older ones. And with a great disappointment, we found that they did not have to correct size. Going for our second choice, a simple, yet classy pair of black leather gloves, we proceeded to the cashier.

Giving us a gift bag, we skipped home, buying a cup of coffee along the way.

The weather outside seemed warmer and the clouds seemed to disperse a bit, letting through more light. We arranged the gift on my father's chair, the cup of coffee comfortably in each on his desk, the gloves in a suitable size with white tissue paper poking out.

As my father name home, we hid our look of excitement, and smiled at his delighted outburst from his study.