Your cynicism is showing.” My wife said with a look of
amused disdain.
We were
standing at the exit door of the doctor’s office. You know, when you hit middle
age and you have to go in for all sorts of tests and poking and prodding? Yeah,
it was one of those visits. Not a pleasant thing to go through but it is
something we must all be subjugated to.
I smiled at
her. She was standing between me and the door. Her smile and sarcasm were
exuding off of her like so many pheromones. “Yeah, well, it’s mostly just
sarcasm. After all, I don’t really hate Christmas. I just don’t like it as much
as I used to.”
“Well,
other people can hear you. You need to whisper.”
I turned
around, there was a middle aged man sitting in a chair looking at his smart
phone and a medical assistant sitting behind a counter tapping away at her
computer. I turned back to my wife and mouthed a bunch of words without letting
and sound escape my voice. She smiled and then laughed.
I couldn’t
help myself. My sarcasm, my wit, my disdain for one particular holiday simply because
I end up working on it for over four months of the year couldn’t hold me back.
The season of love, forgiveness and joy, a season that in my young teenage
years was filled with disappointment, sadness and loneliness that had been
changed in my early twenties to become a season filled with happiness and
exuberance had now become a season of work, pain, toil and unending tasks, has
overtaken me.
I’m sure
there is a simple mathematical equation that can explain all of this in my
life. However; if I put it down here, I’m also sure it would bore the shit out
of all of you. It’s not that I’ve lost my enjoyment of the holiday season. It’s
that the shine of the season is now tarnished to me.
You see, if I were a chef and I
spent four months of the year preparing a dinner for Easter or Thanksgiving, I’m
sure I’d hate ham and turkey. Or if I were an environmentalist, I’d hate Arbor
Day. Or if I were a maker of fireworks, I’d deplore the New Year and all the independence
days that came with it. You see, it’s a matter of perspective to me. Take away
all the twinkly lights, take away all the feel-good songs, take away all the movies,
the media, the food drives and what do we have left?
I’ll
tell you what we have left; aside from the mandatory over spending of middle
class America, we have a consumer based hike in the National Deficit. Just
kidding. But seriously folks. Don’t go out and go into debt for Christmas. It’s
not worth it. Your kids wont really remember it and neither will you.
Tell
you what… I’ll go over some of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten in my life if
you promise not to spend more than you can afford this year. Need I say this is
in no particular order? Maybe I do. So, here are my top Christmas gifts in no
particular order.
1:
a plastic palomino horse when I was about 6 years old. I loved that thing and I’ve
no earthly idea whatever happened to it. I received it the year my dad and mom moved us
out of our house on Clover Lane in Green Bay and I had many adventures with it.
2:
My daisy BB gun. I had a ton of fun shooting that thing at all sorts of
targets. Windows of my mean neighbor’s house. Paper targets. Sides of garages and
the occasional bird, rabbit and squirrel. (Also, my friends when we got into BB
gun fights. Even though they had the Crossman pump action I still managed to
peg them with my trusty Daisy.)
3:
My unicycle that I never thought my mother or her fiancé felt I needed. I
learned a lot from trying to ride that blasted thing. Especially balance. And, I
feel that most of the kids in the neighborhood who failed at riding it looked
up to me because I could ride it.
4:
My K2 skii’s. I love skiing. I wish I could do it now. But, since I’m a middle
aged man with bad knees and a back that hasn’t seen a day where it didn’t
decide to cause me pain or suffering in one form or another, I doubt I’ll ever
spend anytime barreling headlong down the side of a mountain with no worries or
concerns in my life. It is an invigorating feeling. Being so close to the edge
of the uncontrollable. Maybe that is why I ride a motorcycle now.
5:
My quilts and wall hangings. I have four. All hand made by people that care
about me for some unknown reason. They say they love me and think I’m worthy of
all the time, energy and effort they spend on creating things out of almost
nothing. The love that was used in making them fills my heart and head with unfathomable
joy, pride and respect.
6:
The cards. I’d like to pick one out in particular but I can’t. You see, back in
the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, scrapbooking was all the rage and my family
took to it like a fish to water. They made all these crazy cards and sent them
to me. I saved every one of them. They are sitting in a drawer next to my bed.
I have been known on very private and lonely occasions to take them out and
read them. No matter how bad I feel, they seem to cheer me up and pull me away
from the edge I’m straddling.
7:
My rainbow towel. It’s over twenty years old now and I still use it. Not on a
daily basis. No. I can’t. Simply because it is threadbare and almost ready for
the trash bin. It was something I once saw in a movie, made an offhand comment
about and then, it showed up as a present on Christmas day. I love it and I
always will. It not only reminds me of the diversity of life but how a simple comment
can cause someone to go on the hunt for something that was damn near impossible
to find in a life before the internet and e-commerce.
8:
The Atari 2600. This home video game brought more hours of enjoyment to me and
my two step brothers at a time when our lives were filled with questions,
concerns and a very real uncertainty of future in our lives. We didn’t have a
lot of games but the ones we had, we played the shit out of.
9:
The Lionel Santa Fe train set. It wasn’t until about 6 or maybe 7 years ago
that I was told the history of that train set and the impact it made on my
family. But, as a young boy who was fascinated by all things mechanical, it was
a great present. It helped me and my father bond by building a train layout in
our basement and it helped me and my mother become closer after years of
separation. And, once I found out the provenance of the train set, well, it
just endeared the gift even more to me.
10:
The love of my family. I can’t go through my yearly struggles and tasks and not
feel as if during these particular weeks that they don’t struggle and stress
with me. I know how hard I work to help them and I know it is reciprocated by
them to me. They don’t say it. They don’t talk about it. They don’t even
complain about my grumpiness, my doom and gloom attitude or even my constant
complaining of how terrible my body is and how it’s breaking down on me. They
just keep doing whatever they can within their power to make sure I’m taken care
of and my needs are met so I can take care of them. (This is not a gift you can
wrap. This is not a gift that is given once a year. No, this is a gift that is
given every day. And that is something that no one can ever truly put a value
upon.)
So,
in short, I value the intangible. The gifts of love and affection that can only
be given with love and affection and a small amount of money. I value time and
connection. Not the latest and greatest. Just the vapors of a life with the
people that mean more to me than the world can tangibly offer.
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