Simple Gifts

I was on the phone last night talking to my eldest child, who much to my dismay lives two and half hours away. We have been watching television together, via the phone. "Ooh, here it comes, my favorite part," I say as we both sigh at the upcoming events on the movie we are sharing. "I know, this part is brutal,"my beloved child says. We talk about the days events, about her future, which seems so open it's overwhelming, and share our time, our hope with each other. I tell her I watched the special about the White House Christmas, whose theme this year is "Simple Gifts". The irony of the pageantry, pomp and circumstance of the doings in the people's house and the theme is not lost on me. "I suppose they have to decorate that way," I sigh. My child says back sarcastically,"Do they?" I hear the sneer in her voice at the unfairness of where we as a country are, and how split we seem to be.
Both of us digressed into our own Christmas memories and how we were able to celebrate with very little money. A few meaningful gifts, homemade cookies, and trips in the car viewing others lights since we could never afford our own. Our Christmases were simple back then because they had to be. "Remember how we had to get up at four o'clock in the morning before you had to go to work to open our gifts?" my girl recalls. "Yeah, I hated that but I didn't want to miss Christmas", I say back with the smallest amount of regret in my voice. "You always made it fun", she says. I drifted back to the time when time and money were commodities we never seemed to have enough of.
Christy, my oldest of the four children, is in a place where the simple things mean the most to her. All she ever wanted for Christmas was to be loved and time, as much time as she could get. We laughed at the time my friend Judy and I got together, when our kids were really small, we decided to bake cookies they could decorate. In our heads, it was a simple heartfelt activity for our small children to participate in. We spent hours in the kitchen baking little ginger bread men and women for the kids to ice and sprinkle to their hearts delight. We imagined them spending at least an hour painstakingly decorating the little people, while we got to watch the wonder of the holiday spirit. In our heads it was all so magical. The reality was the kids got bored of our heart felt activity after about five minutes and ran off to play in the other room. Judy and I looked at each other and laughed. All our efforts were for absolutely nothing. That is the thing about kids, they require very few organized activities when they are small. Their imaginations are far more entertaining than anything we could dream up. In the end Judy and I shared some wine, decorated cookies to the point of ad nausea, ending up making our population anatomically correct and rather crude. The more vulgar we were with the cookies, the more we laughed. We of course, hid the cookies that were most explicit from the kids, not that they would have known what was going on anyway. Laughing hysterically, my husband Danny walked in the door from work. "What is so funny?" Judy and I busted out into fits of laughter, tears running down our faces. Danny seeing the naked village of cookie people, picked one up, taking a large bite, headed for the shower. I have to tell you, that is still one of my favorite Christmas memories. Many years later, I went to see my daughter, Christy, where she was sharing a house with several friends. I had taken stockings for the fireplace, a Christmas tree with boxes of decorations and things to make cookies. We baked and decorated our new version of the ginger bread naked village, inspired by a bottle of wine and the memory of what I had told her actually happened the night Judy and I laughed so hard we couldn't talk.
I believe in Christmas miracles. I never expect to win the Christmas lottery; I just wait for the moment when clarity of what Christmas really means to my family shows itself in the simplest of gifts of having each other to love. I have over the years made thoughtful gifts, instead of racking my brain to figure what to buy for people, who are perfectly capable of buying themselves their wants, needs and hearts desires. I choose instead to make picture calenders, memory quilts, home made salsa, and, of course, Christmas cookies. There is some pageantry in our house. I decorate with the things we have acquired over the last 25 years. I make homemade soups for the cold nights by the fire. I bake yummy desserts to be shared and gobbled by passing grown children as they head out the door. Having them stop for five minutes to kiss the top of my head and share a joke is the simple gift I hope for.
As the season comes to a close this year, I will look back on the nights I spent with Christy, on the phone watching movies on TV. It was the simple gift she gave to me this year, her time, her attention, and as she always so graciously gives me, her love.