Description - Lee finds the perfect Christmas gift for her mother at a sports-injury clinic specializing in foot-rubs.
Excerpt-It was the stained glass hands in the window that first caught Lee’s attention. SPORTS INJURY CLINIC the sign over the hands said. Below, in smaller letters were the words OUR HANDS + YOUR PAIN = RELIEF. The fingers of the hands were together, with the thumbs stuck out sideways, tips of the index fingers and thumbs touching. When Lee had first seen them on the way to her grade five class at Dr. McPherson Public School, she had held her own hands out in front of her like that, and could picture them on someone’s back.
But it was the glass itself that truly grabbed her attention. It was pale blue, with lines of darker blues running through it. Sort of like gas in a puddle, Lee thought, except the streaks are only one colour.
Before the hands had appeared, she hadn’t paid much attention to the new business, sandwiched between a pawnshop and a place selling used appliances. She hadn’t really taken notice, even though it was rather different than the other somewhat seedy businesses she passed daily. She even knew what the inside of the place was like, or at least, what it used to be like before her dentist moved. She hadn’t paid much attention when that had happened, knowing her mother would make her go to the new place, wherever it was, when she got the call saying Lee’s six-month check-up was due. “Teeth and feet,” she would say. “We might be poor, but we have to take care of your teeth and feet, not like Gramma did with me.”