My husband and I have settled on giving one larger and one smaller Christmas gift to each other. This helps us simplify and focus on what’s important at Christmas: seeing friends and family, enjoying holiday experiences and helping others.
This year, I knew I would receive a computer monitor for my large gift from Husband, allowing me to enter the late 20th century in technology! When it came time to open my smaller gift from him, I began stripping wrapping paper from a medium-small box. Opening it, I found something I did not recognize at first. It was an elongated tube with silver metal and plastic.
Holding it up I realized it was a replacement plumbing part for a bathroom sink. I was disappointed and, more significantly, incredulous that Husband would wrap up a hardware item for a household repair and call it a gift.
It came with Husband’s pledge to install it, but I already knew he intended to fix the sink.
Husband felt bad that I wasn’t delighted.
C-gal and Grandpa opened their gifts, then it was my turn again. I was surprised to have another box to open. It turned out to be my actual gift from Husband. The plumbing supply gift was just an unusual “extra.” Very unusual.
He must have missed hearing the jeweler’s ad running on the radio here: a guy is pumped about giving his wife a new dishwasher, when what she really wants is a piece of beautiful jewelry.
My husband, my cheapskate? Maybe not cheap this time, but possessing a very strange sense of what makes for a good gift. Or maybe not so strange, for an engineer!
By the Sweet Grace 