There were homemade presents, too. One of my grandmothers had a wealthy aunt who showed up occasionally to take her for drives in a chauffeured burgundy Lincoln. The auntie always brought a box of See's candy "for the children." When we had demolished the candy, my grandmother would save the box, and every Christmas, each of us would receive a See's candy box from Grandma. No matter how you prayed that this time it would hold candy, you opened it and found stuffed prunes. Grandma had filled the prunes with chopped dates and nuts, a sticky, cloying mixture that she further sweetened by rolling the prunes in powdered sugar. I always said a polite 'thank you', and disposed of them when no one was looking by throwing them over the steep edge of the hill on which we lived. Almost sixty years later, my father and I were reminiscing and laughing about those prunes, and suddenly he said: "I'd give a lot to have one now," and just as suddenly, we both were crying.
Lewis Carroll wrote this unique double acrostic for Gertrude Chataway, who inspired his great nonsense mock-epic The Hunting of the Snark. The verses embody her name in two ways — by letters, and by syllables; Wikipedia |
Another well-meant homemade present was a pair of itchy, hand-knitted bed socks, which were supposed to keep your feet warm while you slept. I, who never had any trouble with cold feet, would don them obediently so that Grandma could see that I wore them, and then, as soon as I was under the covers, kick them off and relegate them to the furthest bottom corner of the bed.
It's embarrassing to think back over the sheer volume of presents I've received over the years. A few stand out: a beautiful, winter-white skirt of soft wool embroidered with pale blue and silver snowflakes that I longed for but knew we couldn't afford, that turned up miraculously anyway ... an opal ring that my great aunt had promised me when I was sixteen ... from my husband, a pair of books by Carmen Bernos de Gasthold, the first Christmas we were married ... a present my eldest son selected all by himself for me when he was about eight, blue ornament earrings paid for from his allowance ... the Double Crostic books another son gives me yearly ... a copy of Babar the King brought me by my adult middle son ... photos of my grandchildren taken and compiled into a little book by my clever daughter-in-law.
But the very best gifts that we have both given and received aren't gifts that can be wrapped. When my children were small, we lived several hundred miles away from their grandparents and great-grandmother. Each year, we would pack up the children and the presents and drive 11 hours to spend the holiday with them. It was the best gift we could offer.
Our own children gave us the same gift, traipsing across the country with their three small children so that Grandma and Grandad and Great Grandmary would have a Merry Christmas. This summer they moved East, and are now just 90 miles away, so their trip will be considerably shorter. But I remember how hard it is to leave one's own Christmas tree, and how inconvenient it is to travel with children. It's still a considerable sacrifice to leave home on Christmas Day. It is, however, what families do for each other. Their presence is without any question the best present in the world.
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