IT’S HOLIDAY TIME ONCE AGAIN!

And so another year of holiday anxiety is upon us! Do you know where your mind is?

TLW (The Little Woman) fortunately for me does all the shopping for the Holidays. With present buying and food purchasing. Me, I only have to worry about her. Yet, I am the one with all the anxiety and worry about what to get her for Christmas morning.

The worry begins about June when I realize that once the fast moving summer days are over, I’m facing the holidays, and have I put aside enough for TLW to make it a nice gift. By November and early December, I have nightmares that have me awakening to Christmas morning and her giving me a great gift, and me? I forgot to get her a gift! Fortunately, this has never happened to me but the dream seems real.

Dad used to give one of us money and tell us to go get mom a gift, something I never did, but often wondered how that might fly.

The other day I was walking through the mall on my way to the Apple store, when I went through Macy’s and the perfume department. It took me back to when I was a young kid with money to burn, sometimes as much as $15 to $20 bucks! Being I was only 11 or 12, I had a newspaper route and would save my money for the holiday, I had to buy my mother and father a gift and this meant getting on the Fuoco Bus line on Montauk Highway and taking it into Main Street in Patchogue, getting off to shop and walking the cold Christmas Eve morning and early afternoon going into stores and figuring what to get Mom, who was first on my list.

As I past the counters of lipsticks and perfumes in Macy’s last week, it took me back to McBride’s Pharmacy in Patchogue and the display of lipsticks that I would pick from, or was it a bottle of perfume? Then I would look for Dad’s gift that was more trouble because dad didn’t wear ties or really read. Often I would wind up with a tool, but I can’t recall what I did buy. Then there was always something for my baby sister, since she was the baby of the family. My other sisters were out of luck since I didn’t have enough money for them.

I’d go home and wrap the present as mom was cooking the magnificent fish dinner for the feast that night, and I would become excited, thinking my gift would wow her. In those days $15 was a lot of money for a kid, and I was proud that I had saved it. Now I look back and realize that mom’s excitement on Christmas Morning wasn’t the gift, but the fact that I went through the trouble. That was her gift to me even to this day, a memory I will always cherish.