It doesn't get much better than this: the day before Christmas, a gentle snow falling outside, a mug of hot spiced cider and Denny in the kitchen making apple crisp to take to the reception following Christmas Eve Mass ....
Meanwhile I'm thinking of something that happened a year ago while I was shopping at Macy's for a gift for my dad. It was one of those chance encounters with a stranger and I've been thinking about it ever since because it's a good reminder that sometimes even the things we tell ourselves we don't like about the Christmas season can turn out to be just as significant as the things we do.
Usually I avoid the big shopping malls and department stores because I can't stand the overpriced, mass-produced sameness of what's found there along with the glitzy kitchiness of the decor, the crowded lines of irritable frazzled shoppers, the canned Christmas music and everything else that contributes to what usually ends up being a wasted couple of hours.
But I had gone shopping at Macy's because I had run out of ideas. I used to enjoy coming with special gifts for my dad. But that was back in the days before he began disappearing into wherever he has gone now that dementia has carried him away. He's turning into someone it breaks my heart to see. And trying to find a Christmas present for him had become an ordeal. I'd run out of ideas and so in desperation I decided to give up and buy him a sweater.
The men's department at Macy's was crowded with shoppers including a young woman with purple spiked hair and pierced studs in her eyebrows, nose and lips. She was wearing black fishnet stockings under a very short, very tight skirt and her equally tight and extremely low-cut tank top revealed just about all there was to see of her two lavishly tattooed breasts. I couldn't help thinking she looked a little out of places shopping at Macy's. But when she walked up to me and asked if she could help me I couldn't believe it. She actually worked there! How on earth did she get hired? Doesn't Macy's have some sort of dress code for their employees? Apparently not.
But as usually turns out to be the case when we are forced to confront the reality behind the people we tend to stereotype, she turned out to be far different from the person I - in my unfortunate tendency to be judgmental - had initially taken her to be.
She greeted me warmly with a lovely smile that made me overlook the shiny black lipstick she was wearing and asked if she could help me find something. I told her I was looking for a gift for my dad, and then to my horror I felt my eyes fill up with tears and I just stood there hoping she wouldn't notice. But she had noticed and to my amazement she reached out and lightly placed her hand on my arm. I noticed that she was wearing a metal bracelet that looked like it had been purchased in a hardware store, and each of her fingers was tattooed with a letter to spell out the word L-O-V-E.
"Is your dad sick?" she asked with a genuine look of compassion in her eyes. So I told her that yes, as a matter of fact he is indeed very sick and we are afraid it's Alzheimer's. "I'm so sorry," she said and something about the way she said it made me think she really meant it.
I told her I was looking for a sweater, a cardigan perhaps, but it had to be something he could put on easily because buttons were a problem for him.
"I think I know the perfect thing," she said, motioning for me to follow her past racks of overpriced merchandise to the back of the store where things were less pricey. She picked up a dark gray sweater with large buttons and big buttonholes. "I practically live in this sweater in the winter time," she said, adding that she likes to shop in the men's department for warm clothes. And then I noticed that sure enough, she was in fact wearing the same sweater. It just hadn't been that obvious - given the short skirt and low-cut tank top beneath it.
So I bought the sweater and while she was wrapping it in tissue, she looked at me and said, "I don't know if you're into prayers or not, but I am. And so I want you to know that from now on whenever I wear this same sweater I'll say a little prayer for your dad."
I gave my dad the sweater for Christmas last year.
Of all the gifts I've ever given him something tells me perhaps this one was the most important.
