Christmas 2007: My Favorite Gifts

Although this wasn't a Christmas I thought I could enjoy I did. My Mom passed away right before Christmas 2006. Just putting up the tree was hard this year knowing she wouldn't be with us. The Christmas Carols were painful to hear. They were everywhere. I had to bolt out of several stores after hearing a couple of songs like " I'll Be Home For Christmas" or Bing Crosby's "A White Christmas" . Those were songs my Mom and I would listen to every Christmas. I had several losses in 2006, my Aunt also died and my sister nearly died. Still, I have children and grandchildren and we all had to get through this difficult Christmas together.

At first I had wanted to just ignore Christmas but we couldn't do that to the children. We decided to keep it as normal as possible and after a while the spirit of Christmas took over and we went ahead with gifts ,the special dinners and opening presents Christmas morning.

The best present? Well, my daughter put together an album with all the pictures we had of my Mom. My Mom with the grandchildren , her great grandchildren, my Mom with me and my daughter,my Mom with our dogs. It was a wonderful album and I know I'll be cherishing it. The memories that were so painful were also wonderful. I'm so glad we had so many,many pictures. It wasn't the most expensive gift I got but it was the most meaningful. It made me aware of how important it is to cherish each moment and to document them with photographs if you can. On another note it's also important to label each photograph you have so others will know who the people are and what year the pictures were taken. Many pictures I came across when going through my Mom's belongings gave me no clue as to who the people were. Now I had an album, with dates and names of all the special moments with my Mom.

This gift also made me aware of how important it is to spend time with your family, with your loved ones and how nourishing it is to have them around you when you are going through a rough patch. Just having grand hildren around with all their hugs and smiles helps heal you. Watching them open their presents and get so much enjoyment out of even the most simple of present was wonderful. They got some rather large gifts and some really small. My younger grandson was so excited to get sticky notes with words he could learn on them, he also got Wii to share but the big fuss was over the sticky notes, that was his favorite. At best it must have cost a little over a dollar. The older grandson was wowed by a kite shaped like the pirate ship from Pirates of the Caribbean. That cost $10.00 but you would have thought it cost $100.00 by the smile on his face. He was just thrilled that he could take this to the park with his Dad and fly it.

My son in law 's favorite was a Wok with all the trimmings. Not a fancy high end cooking piece but a simple Wok that he had wanted for a long time.He was very happy with this gift but what put the biggest smile on his face was his step son wanting to spend time flying that kite with him.

My husband got a stove. A practical, shiny, stainless steel stove. That was pricey. He is an exceptional cook and has been cooking on an old piece of junk for almost 10 years. That ws his favorite and he'll be getting the microwave to go with it . That was a more typical gift that you would expect a big response from and it got it's big response but all of us being together, the good feelings that were taking place, the good memories we were making was the best gift of all for me.