Making It Up As I Go Along #309

MONDAY...
— Work is okay. I’m busy in QC doing all sorts of different tasks. Makes the day go by pretty quick that way.
— Forsberg coming back to the NHL... I hope he does well in Colorado... I’ve always liked that guy.

TUESDAY...
— NHL trade deadline and Montreal sells rather than buys. It’s frustrating seeing how well that team has done this year.
— Atlas comes over to check my old computer. It appears that the hard drive is dead. Now it’s a matter of seeing if I can get any of the stuff saved off of there. At least the most important files are on my laptop, but it’s still a pain.

WEDNESDAY...
— Work is slightly annoying. I find I don’t much like weeks in QC... I much prefer AFIS.
— Some playing around on the computer in the evening. And forcing myself not to nap in order to get a good night’s sleep.

THURSDAY...
— Work is alright... go to a pub for a drink and bite to eat afterwards. Home for the evening where I watch some TV and fall asleep during the Simpson’s before bed. I wake up a good half hour after I mean to go to bed... oops.

FRIDAY...
— Work is okay. Go to HQ for lunch with Janice and meet Kiyomi and Jason, among others, there.
— Groceries after work and a quiet evening around the house... with hockey, a movie and a nap.

SATURDAY...
— Quiet house day. Some movies, e-mails, hockey on TV and I count five years with of pennies and roll them. It probably takes an hour and a half to be done with the pennies and I get $7 worth rolled. Is there anything more useless than a penny?


The Sweater
Presents. We all give each other presents. Some give more than others and some ask for more than others. Some presents mean more to us and some don’t hold as much of our heart.

I have given and received some duds. And I have given and received some amazing ones. I also remember being there for moments when loved ones have gotten monumental presents. Some monumental for the happiness they created... others for the bizarreness in the reaction.

A bizarre moment that stands out to me is one Christmas many years ago. My mother opens a gift from my uncle and is obviously perplexed by the moment...

“Oh... its... an owl...”

You see, she has just finished unwrapping a foot high bronze statue of, quite obviously, an owl. She turns it over in her hands seeing if there is something more to it. Does the bird open up? Is there a switch to turn on some hidden light inside? No... it’s just a statue of an owl.

We all laugh at the moment. It’s a nice enough statue. I believe it remains somewhere within my parent’s home. But it was about as far from an expectation that any of us had. At the beginning of that Christmas day, we’d have been there for many an hour guessing if you’d expect any of us to come up with an owl as a gift to be opened.

I’ve given gifts that I didn’t think would cause as much of a stir as they did. I recently sent a stain glass wall hanging for my mother. My visiting cousin brought it with her and soon afterwards, I got a phone call of shocked surprise from mom. She didn’t seem to think I remembered her favourite flowers... and seeing them sitting there in the glass was, like the owl, unexpected.

Other presents have shocked family members and caused emotional reactions best not shared here. Although I remember a gift I did not receive some years ago, and emotions got the best of me.

The year our last dog died, I had asked for a collage picture to remember her by. I feared one day forgetting the animal that was one of my best friends for the past dozen years. I had looked through old photos and seen so many memories of her... I wanted to save some of these and be able to see them framed on a wall rather than tucked away in a box.

But that Christmas, I still felt the scar of the loss, and as I opened presents, I became ever more fearful of the possibility of the collage picture. Something I wanted but, on that day, no longer felt ready to see.

Opening my final present, I found something unrelated to our little dog. I think it was a hockey jersey... one I’d still have to this day and was happy to get. But still I broke down with tears of sorrow and of relief. I missed our dog, who for more than a decade previously would be poking through wrapping paper and looking up at us with a wagging tail. And I was glad I didn’t get the picture I had asked for.

Looking back, I still would love to get such a collage. She really was a sweet little dog.

A Christmas Story tells the tale of a little boy getting his greatest Christmas gift... a Red Rider Carbon Action B.B. Gun.

I believe I have previously written of my version of such a present. One I still have... although a worn out bulb means it no longer works... a portable arcade game called “Fire Away.” It’s basically a simplified version of Space Invaders and I picked that present out of the Sears Wish Book, eyeing it as the Holy Grail of Christmas gifts. My desire for that game went on over several months and my disappointment began to grow as with each gift I opened, I’d eye the remaining presents to see if they were the proper size and shape to possibly be my game.

And with the last gift opened, the game remained unaccounted for.

Just as in the Christmas Story movie, I seemed to have another gift left over in a corner. My father got it for me and I feverishly tore the wrapping off to find my Fire Away. It stands out as, from a child’s point of view, the greatest gift I ever received.

Other gifts hit you by surprise. An unexpected and previously unasked for desire that a loved one either guessed right or had superior intuition about. I’ve received several such gifts.

My mother once returned from a conference she was at and brought me back a Star Wars action figure. Little did she know at the time that the one she brought back was the very one I had been searching for on my weekly walks to the local K-Mart store. The figure was never there however and it almost took on a mythical air for me. The action figure of the robot bounty hunter, IG88, became my very own Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot. Until that day when mom casually pulled it out of her bag and handed it to me. My excitement, at that moment, knew no bounds.

Another gift I received that left me delighted with surprise is a VHS tape which I got one birthday. As a child, watching cartoons on CBC, there were few happier moments as those times when an old short would come on. It was never scheduled in the TV guide but, every now and then the 1980 short called “The Sweater” would come on. This is the telling of the tale when a French boy in small town Quebec needed a new hockey sweater... and, to his horror, Eaton’s sends him not the number nine, Maurice Richard Canadiens sweater... but a blue and white Toronto Maple Leafs one instead.

Well on a birthday of mine, back in my mid twenties, I open a gift and find this tape of the Sweater. I hadn’t expected it... didn’t ask for it... and actually largely forgot about it. But seeing this tape sitting in my hands, I was rushed back to childhood days.

The Sweater is actually the reason why I’m writing this piece today. For I’ve often looked at the tape, sitting on one of my shelves, and thought I’d like to get the DVD of it someday. I’d often check the Amazon website and it would never be available. But today it dawned on me... go where my mother had gone so many years before... so I checked the National Film Board website and sure enough, there is the DVD version of The Sweater just waiting to be ordered. Needless to say, I’ll be checking the mail with added vigor over the next week or two. My childhood luck with the TV, that turned to my happy reintroduction via VHS will soon make it to modern times by way of DVD.

Yes gifts are an amazing part of our interactions. Sometimes the biggest, most grand present is met with a sigh and the slightest little gesture is a moment that stays with us for a lifetime.