Jan 5, 2017 4 min read

So where were we?

Oh, right. Last we talked, it was after Christmas and I thought I wouldn’t be coming up with any more ideas for columns. But here I am, happy to say. Where do I hop back aboard this train of stories?

Christmas is always good for a story. To tell you mine, I have to take you back to Thanksgiving, when I started to think about what gifts to get my kids.

I think Christmas gifts should be proportioned the same as a healthy plate of food: some protein, come carbs and some doughnuts. Balance the gift stack in the same way and you get something useful (the protein), something good-looking (the carbs) and something frivolous (the doughnuts).

For my son that meant a carby leather jacket, a doughnutty gift card for fast food, and the meaty, useful thing – a snow cover for his car.

Those of us who don’t have garages uncluttered enough to house our cars know how handy a cover can be. Mine is like an elasticized shower cap for my Subaru. If they’re calling for snow, I put it on the night before and in the morning, voila, I peel it off to reveal a clean, dry car.

I went on Amazon and ordered a cover to fit my son’s SUV. The cover was a masculine silver color, and even had little mittens for the side mirrors. A week after Thanksgiving, UPS delivered the long, rectangular, plain cardboard box to the front porch.

I checked the address to make sure it was meant for us, and hid it behind the piano in the front hall.

Each time I spoke with my son, I told him his gift had arrived. It was big! It was hidden! It was useful!

Two days before Christmas, I dragged the box out from behind the piano and wrapped it. It took a half a roll of reindeer paper. I put a bow on it and put it back behind the piano.

Christmas morning came. I told him to open that tall, skinny box last. As he tore into the wrapping, I sat there on the bottom step, grinning like a mother whose kid was about to find an actual new car in that box.

He peeled back the top and peered in.

“Wow, Mom,” he exclaimed. I clasped my hands in pride.

He started pulling out the contents of the box. It was not a rolled up, silver car cover. It was a long ice scraper with a brush. Then another ice scraper. Then two more. Turns that inside that box I’d hidden behind the piano for all those weeks was not a car cover after all, but four ice scrapers.

“Thank you!” my dear, sweet son said, four times.

In the holiday crunch, Amazon had gotten its wires crossed. Had they sold out of the car covers and substituted with other items meant to address the same problem? To extend my metaphor, if they’d sold out of shower caps, would they have stuffed a box with hair dryers?

Funny thing about presents. We wrap them so that the recipient doesn’t know what they are. But the gift giver isn’t supposed to be surprised, too. Imagine what else could arrive unexpectedly in a long, skinny box: a rifle, maybe. Or a python?

In our family, ice scrapers tend to go missing, and so my son will be set in that department for a long time. Not that he’ll need them. Amazon says the car cover will arrive next week, maybe in time for some snow.