Aunt Celestina carefully packaged party gifts for the kids in red-and-white polka-dot boxes she’d bought at the Dollar Store. In the boxes she placed silver-foiled bunny-shaped chocolates, gold chocolate coins, all-day jawbreakers, chintz-and-rhinestone tiaras for the girls, plastic candy blue visors for the boys, tickets for the children’s rides at the Gage Park Festival of Friends taking place down the street, and little troll dolls with spiky yellow hair that kids found funny. Of course, the kids were all in their 40s now. The gifts dated back to August 18, 1983. My cousin Margaret should have turned seven that year.
Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto, Canada.