It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.  The gift.  The gift lovingly and impishly prepared for me by my loving and impish wife for my birthday nine years ago.    The best of gifts and the worst of gifts.

She presented me a 24×36 inch piece of light blue poster board adorned with two flaps, two six-inch squares of purple construction paper folded at the top and taped to cover whatever it was that lay on the poster board beneath.  The flaps were labeled “Door #1”and “Door #2..”  It was just like “Let’s Make a Deal.”

“You may choose one,” she said, “Door #1 or Door #2.  Open the door and what you see will be your birthday gift.  But you can only choose one door, you will only get one one gift, one and not the other.”

“Door #1, Door #1,” my grandsons, Jack and Sam, urged.  “Door #1.”  What door should I choose?  What thoughtful and wonderful gift might be revealed (because my wife’s gifts are always wonderful and thoughtful)?  But what of the door I do not choose?  What precious gift would I forfeit … forever?  Door #1 or Door #2?  As with all the very important decisions I am obliged to make, I stalled at the brink, not wanting to make the wrong choice.  Finally, I went with my grandsons.  Door #1 it is.

I lifted the flap and there it was, a most thoughtful and wonderful gift indeed.  There, beneath the paper door, glued to the poster board, was a photograph of a Caribou, a Current Designs Caribou, the kayak of my dreams, a Greenland-style sea kayak, quick and responsive and gorgeous.  I had paddled a Caribou in the Union River estuary in Ellsworth one weekday evening the summer before when Cadillac Mountain Sports was hosting a boat tryout.  I fell in love with the boat immediately and knew I wanted one … someday.  But someday had come!  I was really going to have a Caribbean-blue Caribou of my very own!

“Open the other door,” my wife said.  “See what you could have had if you had chosen the other door,” my loving and wicked wife said.  I lifted the flap of Door #2 and a lump grew in my throat and tears filled my eyes as the image beneath was revealed: the photograph of an Australian Shepherd puppy.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

That summer on our return to Maine, I picked up my Caribbean-blue Caribou at the Cadillac Mountain Sports store in Ellsworth and have paddled miles of ocean in it with great delight ever since.  But no puppy.

Until that next fall, when we drove to Hazelton, Iowa, and as I knelt on the floor of the garage at the home of Cloverfields Aussies to greet the litter of ten-week old pups, the blue merle male who would soon bear the name Toby ran to me and jumped up to eagerly lick my face.  Because my wife is most certainly the giver of thoughtful and wonderful gifts.