Season of Giving

I’ve been told that I’m hard to buy for. I hear this each Christmas and while it would make sense to assume that this must mean I am a man who wants for nothing, it means only that I’m a man who wants for things far too particular to just leave to chance. Or to the ones whose job it is to know me best.

Thus the list. I don’t actually make a physical Christmas list but, instead, leave a number of well placed hints around the house. This year’s hint called for me to bookmark the specific page where Tricia could find the very item I wanted at the price I found to be most reasonable. It was a Gregory Z65 backpack. An internal frame pack with 4,000 cubic centimeters of storage and weighing less than four pounds. It came in three colors – flint gray, Moroccan blue, and olea green. But I didn’t request a specific color. Instead, I left it to Tricia to decide. That’s the type of guy I am - gracious just to be given anything.

My mother doesn’t wait for hints. She takes you shopping and waits for you to mention something that you like. Spend more than a millisecond looking at something on a shelf or rack and you might as well bag it up and take it home right there.

“What on Earth made you ask your mother for a white, floral-lined dinner jacket for Christmas?” Tricia asks later.

“I assure you I didn’t,” I insist. “I wasn’t planning to hit my ‘white’ stage until at least seventy.”

“Then what made her even dream of getting you that?”

What? That slight pause in the store that I spent wondering to myself: What self-respecting man would wear something like this?

My mom’s notorious for this. In an attempt to keep these gifts a surprise she will take you in July when it’s a thousand degrees outside and Christmas is the furthest thing from your mind. It would probably work, too, if she didn’t call the very next day to brag that she just bought your Christmas gift. You have to pretend not to remember trying on three different pairs of shoes the day before while she pulled a little notebook out of her purse to record the exact make, size, and color.

When it gets right down to it, I’m probably not even worth the effort of giving. I don’t act grateful enough. There are those people who seemingly can’t contain their excitement when opening a gift and fill the room with shrill screams. Or, at least, a small smile. I, on the other hand, hold the gift up before me, blank faced, and assess it in a more pragmatic manner- wondering Where in the world am I going to keep this? I tend to look at gifts much the same way a stock boy might look at a delivery. Every new box has to find a home and if there’s no room that means new stacks in the stockroom. In our house this means cramming things into cabinets, under beds, or in the attic. Right this very minute we have an oversized turkey tray tucked away in the crawl space beneath the house and countless knick-knacks in boxes somewhere in the back of our closets.

Sometimes the problem’s not so much the where as the what. I once received a pair of dress socks from a second grade student. They were nice socks. Black with small pinstripes running vertically up each leg. Of course, I didn’t own a pair of dress shoes and had never shown up to school in anything remotely resembling khakis or slacks. Perhaps he was trying to tell me something.

That would have been the oddest gift I received that year if it weren’t for the little girl in my class who later gave me a pair of underwear. Silk underwear.

“Uh….thanks Claudia,” I choked out as the entire room erupted in laughter at the sight of me sitting there holding up a pair of boxers that would, presumably, one day grace my nether regions.

I didn’t wear them for quite some time because the thought of it made me uneasy. I imagined her asking me how they felt or to model them or something. Far back in the dark shadows of my drawer they sat until finally I gave in and tried them out only to find that the feel of silk against one’s skin, namely a man’s, can bring up a whole new set of problems. From there, I decided to bypass the usual sites of gift purgatory for the donation box. It later warmed my heart to know that somewhere on a cold city street was a needy soul walking around with a newfound smile upon his face.

Sometime it’s just easier to give than to receive.