Giving and giving

I got up early to clean, shifting stuff from one side of the apartment to the other before giving up, before crawling back in bed with a remote and the laptop. I emailed. I worked. I worked entirely too much, and I looked at the mess with dismay.

I had too much stuff. Some of my Christmas gifts had yet to make it out of their packaging, out of the bags and boxes and wrappers and to anywhere but a pile on my bedroom floor. I sighed, and focused on my work, pushing thoughts of gifts aside.

The funny thing is how much I love giving gifts. Finding the perfect thingamajig, whatchamacallit or doohickey that somebody didn't know he wanted and couldn't live without. Giving gifts made me happy.

Over the weekend, I chopped off my hair to give it away. That made me happy, too. It made me forget about work for a while, as I reveled in the snip, snip, snipping and ogling my new, short-haired shadow on the sidewalk. It's the little things.

At some point, after I moved from the bed to the couch and then from the couch to Dupont for the farmer's market, shopping and lunch, I remembered that I'd think about gifts again soon with Valentine's Day. Actually, my sister's birthday came first but I'd finished that by Christmas. Valentine's Day, though. It threw me for a loop.

I've never been a fan of Hallmark Holidays. Maybe because I didn't get cards. Maybe because I did. Nevertheless, I still gave gifts in the name of Saint Valentine. Heart-shaped cookies. Cards. Flowers. Once I almost told a friend I loved him on Valentine's Day, which might have changed my world, but I didn't.

Last year, in the middle of a fight with my brother, in the middle of a blizzard, I tromped over to his house with doughnuts and a candleholder from a friend's fair trade shop. I invited him to dinner and by the end of the night, I'd almost forgotten why we were fighting. It might not have been the traditional goal of the day, but it made me happy.

This year, well, I don't know, but I'll keep my friend's store in mind. I love to give. Besides, I might want to end a fight and help save the world while I'm doing it. A gift that keeps on giving.


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