But with four day shopping days left until Christmas, I already have received my favorite gift.
I’ll go through some of the also-rans first.
As much as I like it, the composite hockey stick I brought home and congratulated my wife on getting me didn’t make the cut, although the angelic look that appeared on Mrs. Santa’s face when she learned she’d bought on clearance at half-off was, well, priceless.
My favorite surely won’t be the new socks I picked out of the bin at the outlet store, either. As much as they’ll improve my daily life — my measuring stick for good gifts — my feet will be disappointed to learn that they can no longer sneak out through gaping holes fore and aft to romp and play.
I’ll have to accept the same kind of shortcoming from my new underwear, which, in being put on, won’t give me as expansive a view of the floor below me as my holey ones.
No, my favorite gift arrived last week, unheralded, unwrapped and in a clear jar. It’s so special to me that, before disclosing its name, I want to list each and every one of its ingredients: Cucumbers, water, vinegar, salt, calcium chloride, lactic acid, natural flavors, sodium benzoate and turmeric.
It’s 32 ounces or 964 milliliters of Cincinnati-made Izzy’s Kosher Sliced pickles, given to me by my daughter.
The pickles are so good I might have considered a conversion to Judaism, were not the time in the Christian religious calendar so awkward. To make the move now wouldn’t be kosher.
As great as they are, though, the taste of the pickles isn’t the key ingredient to my pleasure any more than the sodium benzoate that’s in them.
The key ingredient is what set up the gift itself: That my daughter and I know and get along with one another well enough to make this kind of present a part of our everyday life.
It’s the same kind of often overlooked thing that will allow me to tease my wife over our 2-year-old grandson’s pronunciation of her name by writing it on “to” and “from” card attached to a package.
“Look, I know it really doesn’t mean anything that he calls you ‘Dam Ma,’” I’ll say. “A lesser spouse might make a snarky remark like, ‘From the mouths of babes.’ But I’d never say such a thing. I wrote it on the package only to have a lasting reminder of a memorable aspect of his childhood.”
(For an extended version of the above remarks, consult the entry for “liar” in the latest edition of the Stafford Substandard Dictionary of the English Language.)
In the same way, I expect during the various meal clean ups over the holidays to hear my daughter pass along an intimate barb about the amount of noise I make banging the dishes together.
That will press on an old scar from our hyper-busy child raising days. Back then I was sure I was straining to pull my weight on the home front by emptying the dishwasher in the morning so the kitchen would be clean.
My thanks came in the form of complaints from the kids that the racket I was making woke them up — including the thundering racket my spoon apparently made when it clicked on my cereal bowl in the act of eating.
“Dad, could you turn down the spoon?”
And if I start obsessing over the holidays, I know our son will say, in a smart-alec tone annoyingly like his father’s, “Would you feel better if I filled up the ice cube tray?”
That goes back to his summers home from college, when he was staying up to all hours of the night, I was sure he wasn’t doing his part around the house, and that all this anxiety came to a head the afternoon I looked into the freezer compartment and found one or two ice cubes in an otherwise empty tray.
Let’s say life got a lot better when I scoured the Book of Revelation and didn’t find a mention of nearly empty ice trays as a sign of the apocalypse.
My life improved markedly when I let that go.
After all these years, I’ve come to believe that the line between family function and family dysfunction is a thin one — thin enough that I wish the Ohio Department of Transportation could build us a bumpy strip as we start to cross its double yellow line.
All of us who live in close proximity to one another seem to become experts in one another’s weaknesses more than strengths and, as a result, tend to be less forgiving than we ought to be.
A sense of humor not only can get us through that, it can turn our foibles and peculiarities into the stuff of family legend — the stuff we’ll good-naturedly remind one another of when we get together or Christmas.
Isn’t that right, Dam Ma?
About the Author