A Mother’s Dilemma
My mother has always gone all-out at Christmas time. The huge box would arrive early in December, filled with at least half a dozen presents for me.
It was always preceded by inquiries that began in October: Could you use new pants? What color pants? Fitted or loose? What page in the L.L. Bean catalog was that on? All this would be accompanied with the continual plea: Why haven’t you sent me your Christmas list? It’s already November.
Of course, when I would ask her what she would like, it was always spartan: maybe a new oven mitt or some of those nonskid slipper-socks.
On Christmas morning, her cornucopia of gifts to me would always include something handmade--a sweater she had spent the previous year knitting or an exquisitely tailored jacket she had sewn.
That Christmas 15 years ago, when my husband-to-be and I moved in together, must have profoundly perplexed my mother. Steve, from New York City, was Jewish.
Living in a small town in New Hampshire, my family had few, if any, Jewish friends. And being of hearty, close-lipped New England stock, it wasn’t the sort of thing one asked questions about. Even to me.
I’m sure she stewed for weeks about this holiday dilemma: Should she get an equal number of gifts for this man she had only met once? Should she get him anything at all? Was it a religious faux pas to give someone Jewish a Christmas present?
The only person she could ask such troublesome questions was my father, and I can only imagine his reaction. My father, an avid sportsman and hunter, had, during the previous summer at the lake, watched in horror as Steve paddled the canoe a mile backward because he couldn’t figure out how to turn the thing around in a stiff wind. A few days before that, Steve had set out on a hearty hike around the lake, only to become lost and had to phone my father for a ride home. “If the damn fool needs anything,” my father might have said, “it’s a compass.”
When the box arrived that December, it must have weighed 100 pounds. On Christmas morning I pulled out package after package, all meticulously wrapped and garnished with sprigs of red and green ribbon, all for me. My mother had avoided the whole Steve issue in typically New England fashion--by just pretending it didn’t exist.
But no. At the bottom of the box there was a heavy wrapped cylinder with the note: “To Steve, best wishes.”
We were intrigued. Was this a symbolic blessing for our relationship, a welcome-to-the-family gesture, an acknowledgment that Steve occupied a special place in my life?
In a way, it was all of the above. In their quiet manner, they knew just the right touch of warmth, practicality and good cheer.
It was a can of mixed nuts.
