Slowing it Down....

My father-in-law was a boy of the Depression who never got to finish school.  He made it to fourth grade, then went to work as so many children did in those days.  Yet he lived a healthy life until he died in his late-nineties.  My kids tell me that he turned a cartwheel for them in his nineties!

He was a lively and funny man, one of the best storytellers I've ever met. He often told stories of the Depression, and the years his father raised a houseful of kids by himself.  His mother and one of his sisters died in the flu epidemic, and he was left with the remaining twin of the sister who had died, another sister, and two brothers.  Women in the family offered to take one or two children, but he refused to have his children separated.  He could turn even sad stories into hilarious ones. 

When he told stories, he never rushed them.  He told them in such slow and minute detail that we were all captivated, even if we'd heard the same story many times before.  He told about how little Bernice and Myrtle stood on stools to make biscuits when they were too little to reach the counter, and he told about how he stood longingly as his dad hitched up a carriage to go to the store.  "I wanted to go but I stood there with a little stick in my mouth until he said, 'Oh come on, you can ride this time!'"

My father-in-law loved Christmas!  He made me a doll house one year, a tea cart another.  He was more excited than kids on Christmas morning because he had worked for weeks to get ready for that day.

In their house, there was no ripping into presents, no asking ahead for what the kids wanted.  He slowed it down, made it last for hours. 

He had written out little hints on strips of paper. "Go look under the dining chairs" or "It might be in the shop in the boat."  When you got your hint, you ran to find your present, everyone else waiting to see what you'd bring back.  Of course, you didn't open your present until you were back from the search!  After you'd opened it, there was an unspoken agreement that no one moved on to the next package until the gift had been talked about and you'd heard the entire history of the making of it--and until Granddaddy Mark had been thanked profusely.

I'm going to borrow a page from his playbook this year.  I'm not making things out of wood, but I'm going to make little hints and wait for Nathan and Elena (and even their parents) to find each present in a hiding place.  

Too often, after the weeks of choosing and wrapping and shopping, we tear into the gifts under the tree at lightning speed.  Each gift is a gesture of love from the giver and should be savored, bite by bite, like each dish of a delicious homemade meal, not gobbled up like fast-food burgers.