Well, one was for me and Mr. Rilch. Still mind-blowing, though.
So on Christmas morning, I open a box that contains an envelope. I open the envelope, read a few words and start shrieking so loud it’s a good thing we don’t have neighbors. See, Mr. Rilch and I are both big fans of a certain indie comic strip from the '90s. It’s one of the things we bonded over when first dating, and because the archive is so small, we pretty much have it memorized. So the strip is a time capsule, for us personally and for our generation.
Mr. Rilch found contact info for the cartoonist, asked him about buying some original strips, and, for a small extra fee, could he personally write a letter to me? So that’s what I was screaming about: this letter*, thanking me for my fanship and chuckling about what Gen X hath wrought (he’s only a few years older than us). And six original strips! Of course they’re among our favorites, and there’s two in particular that I intend to have framed.
And as Mr. Rilch said last night, he’s really the only person who could have done this for me. He had to be a fan himself to have that email chain with the cartoonist, and he had to have that shared fanship to know that this would blow my mind. Come to think of it, he did a similar thing about ten years ago, when he gave me the Criterion collection of Leningrad Cowboys. Who else, in the USA, has even heard of those movies and that director?
So that’s still sinking in, and then last night, our friends “Beth” and “Phil” came by for dinner, a movie, and gift exchange. Candy, a video, homemade jam…and then Beth pulls out a sign she painted for us. Well, on a canvas, but the point is, I’m looking at the stenciling that says “The Rilches”, and it takes me a minute to absorb the fact that…it’s a picture of our whole property! She must have taken a photo at the end of our driveway. She got the house itself, the carport, the big tree, and even one of our cats hanging out on the stoop. And she’s good; this is not Napoleon’s portrait of Tricia. If someone saw this in a store, without the name on it, they’d likely say “That’s classy; I’ll take it.” So again, mind blown. As with Mr. Rilch, she had the idea because that’s a view she sees a lot. Well, she’s definitely getting petit fours next year…
*which Mr. Rilch did not open, so we were both reading it for the first time!