Present Wrapping
Did something yesterday I seldom do. Wrapped Christmas presents. Now, it’s not that I never wrap Christmas presents, it’s just that I procrastinate. Most years I would be wrapping on Christmas eve. Not the best time, too much pressure, but I never learned. Until now. I still have one or two presents to buy, but the ones I have bought are now wrapped, and under the tree. Come Saturday I will gather most of them up and take them to Houston.
I may have to walk back the procrastinating part. I think I was trained that way. My mother and father never put anything under the tree until we were asleep. In fact, we waited until Christmas eve to decorate the tree. So, too me, Christmas presents didn’t exist until Christmas morning. As long as I lived in the house, I never saw my mother wrap a Christmas present that I then found under the tree. She must have been the master of subterfuge. Either that or I was purposely blind and just didn’t want to know.
Probably a lot of the latter. I believed in Santa Claus right through the fourth grade. And even after that I never spent any time thinking about my parents buying me presents or looking for presents, because I liked the surprise. I liked Christmas morning. I liked going to bed to a bare tree and waking the next day to find it full of presents. Later, it was one of the many joys of having children, putting them to bed, dragging out the presents, arranging them just so, standing back and hoping you were about to make your kids blissfully happy. It didn’t always work out, but it worked out more often than not. And I can still hardly wait for Christmas morning.