Still posting from the cusp of 2010.
That clears a bit of the flotsam on my desk. It’s December 31, 2009 and now is a good time for clearing, even incomplete clearing. I’ve ended up with a fair bit of Grandma L’s stuff, as I mentioned last post. I inherited it from Aunt D when she died last December 18 (2008). I don’t think I’ll ever think of Christmas without thinking of Aunt D.
Aunt D had no children of her own and was always involved with her nieces and nephews. She always gave really good presents. Not only were the presents good, they were wrapped with fancy wrapping. No one else in the family used such fancy wrappings. We suspected that she paid to have them wrapped at Sears or maybe even a fancier store. There were metallic papers and intricate bows. There were plastic poinsettias and fat ribbons.
No two boxes were alike, unless it was done deliberately. Sometimes if she got, say, me and my two sisters a similar gift, the boxes might be wrapped identically. This was different from everyone else’s presents. Everyone else had a few rolls of flat paper wrapping and curling ribbon. So there was little variety in the wrapping, mostly.
There was one mitigating factor to that, though, and that was Aunt D. We always saved the paper, ribbons, and decorations from her boxes. They could be cut down to wrap smaller boxes in other years. So our plain wrappings were boosted by her hand-me-downs. Oh, and we saved the boxes, too.
Later, much, much later, I learned that she was a shopaholic and that her spending had been a burden on my Uncle L, her brother, and my Grandma L nearly all her adult life. My Dad, her other brother, had pulled away, giving her nothing but advice and criticism when she overspent.
Oh, look. Grandma L had for some reason tucked a newspaper clipping of the death of Phillipe Cousteau, Jacque Cousteau’s son, into the Christmas Story book. She’s hand dated it Fri. June 29-’79. My youngest son, Eric, would be born November of ’79. I have no idea why she thought I, or my sons, would need the clipping. It’s going into the recycling.
Grandma L used to send me and the boys CARE packages – boxes with ‘useful’ things in them. There were find-a-word books, which the boys enjoyed, and which could be bought for a quarter at the drug store. There were packets from Kentucky Fried Chicken, with a knife, spork, napkin, and wet-wipe in each one. I forget what else the boxes were stuffed with. Usually nothing to terribly useful. But she would collect the items and mail them and the kids did enjoy getting them.
I’m listening to Principles of economics, translated, by the Standup Economist on YouTube, to cheer myself up. My YouTube favorites are sort of like getting a box from Grandma L. Not too terribly useful, but very cheering.
