“Oh, there they are; thank Goodness,” I exclaimed. My sons, seven year old Brent and three year old Erik, had just spent several minutes searching the living room for my reading glasses–again. I had already misplaced them once that morning.
“I do not have time for this kind of frustration,” I grumbled. With only three days until Christmas, I felt rushed and distracted and I had been careless. So, there we were, again, crawling around on the floor looking for my glasses. We looked under and behind the sofa, including lifting up each cushion. We checked behind the drapes and on the piano. I was heading for the armchair when Erik spotted them. They were poking out from under the pile of wrapping paper, tags, ribbons and bows that were scattered on the floor.
“Hooray for Erik! Thank you, thank you,” I told him as I hugged him. “I need these glasses to help me get ready for Christmas. You saved the day!” Once again, the lost had been found. The runaway glasses perched firmly on my nose, I could now resume the task of wrapping gifts to put under the tree.
I held the edges of the wrapping paper while Brent carefully tore off a piece of adhesive tape and secured the ends together. “Good job, Brent,” I told him. “Now, Erik, you choose the bow.” After trying out several bows, which usually got stuck, tearing the paper, Erik finally chose a big red one. Placing it in the middle of the present, he pressed down firmly with both hands. “Good job, Erik,” I said as we admired the project. Grandma’s and Grandpa’s present, which was now looking quite crumpled and torn, was almost ready to go under the tree.
Erik may only be three years old, but I wanted to include him in the wrapping of this gift to his grandparents because it was a photograph of him and his brother. He was also learning that Christmas, Jesus’s birthday, is about giving unselfishly and giving from the heart. The joy of giving is a special kind of joy that I wanted the boys to learn early. “It’s a beginning,” I thought as I looked at the tattered and mashed gift over which they had so lovingly labored.
The present was almost finished, but it needed one more thing. “How do you spell, ‘Grandma and Grandpa?’”, asked Brent. He had already started to print the tag. “FROM BRENT TO—,” it read. But Erik was now scooting next to his big brother, pencil in his hand. “Me, too,” He said. “I’ll draw a picture of me.”
“There’s not room on it,” Brent protested. “Mom!”
“It’s okay,” I assured them both. “Here’s another tag, Erik. You can draw your picture on it. Two tags are better than one, anyway. Grandma and Grandpa are going to love it! Oh, and remember that presents are Christmas secrets, so don’t tell them what it is. Let them be surprised when they open it; that’s part of the fun of a present, isn’t it!” They both nodded solemnly. “Now, you guys finish up while I check on the cookies.”
By the time I looked into the living room again, the boys had put the present under the tree but were still busy with the wrapping paper. “Don’t peek!” shouted Brent. “I have more presents to wrap and you can’t look.” I remembered how busy the boys had been most of the morning, coloring, pasting and cutting out colored paper projects. Smiling, I said, “Christmas is full of surprises and secrets, isn’t it! Let me know when you’re finished and then we’ll put everything away.” As I headed back to the kitchen, I could hear Erik’s voice amid the rustling of the paper. “Me too!” he was saying. I smiled; it’s a beginning.
I was, once again, looking for my reading glasses when Brent came into the kitchen. “You can come in now,” he told me as he grabbed a warm cookie off the counter. “No, no, no!” Erik shouted back from the living room. Brent and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows and shrugged. “Let’s let him play a little longer,” I said, “And then we’ll put things away. In the meantime, I need you to help me look for my glasses again–please?” Brent rolled his eyes and sighed. We started looking.
I still had not found my glasses by the next day, or the next, even though the whole family was on alert for them. “I’m so frustrated; I guess I will have to order some new ones right after Christmas,” I told my husband on the way to church Christmas Eve. “But I’ll get by for now. Thankfully, I know all of the Christmas carols by heart.”
Christmas morning was exciting and wonderful as always and was made even brighter when Grandma and Grandpa came through the door. After we settled down around the tree, we took turns opening our presents; it was difficult to tell who was having the most fun, the adults or Brent and Erik.
“Oh, it is just what I needed!”, and “How did you know that I had always wanted one of these?” and “Oh, I love it, thanks so much!” echoed around the room. Finally, all of the presents had been opened, including the boys’ special photograph for Grandma and Grandpa, as well as the special art projects that they had made and wrapped themselves. All, that is, except for what looked like a wadded up piece of wrapping paper under the Christmas tree. It was held together in a little bundle by adhesive tape twisted around it several times and it had a tag with a little picture taped on it.
Erik scrambled under the tree to retrieve the bundle and hurried over to me. Jumping up and down with excitement, he handed it to me, smiling expectantly. “It’s for you!” he shouted. Completely puzzled, I began to unwrap Erik’s mysterious gift. As I got to the bottom layer of Christmas paper, I began to feel a familiar shape. Tears filled my eyes and I started to laugh as I lifted up my missing reading glasses!
Erik was still hopping up and down as he announced, “I found them again that day when you said you needed them for Christmas, so I wrapped them up to give to you for a present! And I kept my secret really good, didn’t I!”
I grabbed him up in my arms and hugged him. “You sure did, Erik, and they were just what I wanted.” Learning about giving from the heart? It was a beginning, I thought, a great beginning.