Wishlists and Other Christmas Letdowns

Posted on December 18, 2002 in Festivals

My mother’s coming tomorrow, Thursday, to go shopping with my wife for appropriate job interview clothing and gifts for a four year old girl on behalf of her Quaker meeting.

I’m dreading this visit because it will have Christmas written all over it. This year, my nephews and nieces will get no carefully selected packages from me. It’s one of my delights to select good gifts for each — things that I sense they will enjoy and learn from. The one time we disappointed my nephew Benjarmin was the year that Lynn decided that the gift would be a scarf. He hated them. I’ve chosen each year since and made him quite happy by the second hand reports I get through my mother.

I’ve kept a wish list on Amazon for two years now. It suffers the same fate as all such lists that I’ve ever kept: people choose to ignore it. I remember going down lists with my mother and her exclaiming “You can’t possibly want that!” Eventually I stopped giving her and my brother lists. They complained. But they managed to get me the very gifts they felt I needed anyways. I hardly ever buy clothes for myself because I expect to get a heap of them from my mother. I don’t bother to dictate a style: last year she had me point to what I wanted out of an L.L. Bean catalog and she got something else she felt better suited me.

Last year one of my sisters-in-law bought me a volume entitled “You are Worthless”. She thought I’d find it funny. I didn’t. Even as a joke, the phrase that I heard too much from my darling older brother wasn’t funny. She wrote me off as humor-impaired. Isn’t that the way it always works for stupid people when they screw up? Her other excuse: what was she supposed to do? She had no list. She bought the book through Amazon where I’ve had a wish list for two years, at least.

My brother bought me The Bridges of Madison County one year. He figured I need to learn to write for the lowest common denominator and that this book would help.

Most of Lynn’s family buys us joint gifts that mostly she can use.

So, this year, I’m hoping that folks give me a year off, that they either feel too embarassed or too miffed about the lack of reciprocity. This is their big year to forget that I exist. I feel terrible about not being able to get gifts for my nieces and nephews. That was the best part of Christmas. Lynn and I had just started looking around when the layoff hit. Our suddenly strained finances meant that this joy was denied us.

So this year, I sit behind the dark facade of our condo — we’re saving energy — and I sit alone at the moment.

My birthday’s coming in February. No one remembers that one anyways.