The Full Suburban: ‘Practical’ and ‘gift giving’ may not pair well, but the Ditto kids have figured it out
My oldest son, George, returned home from his job recently and came into the kitchen as I was preparing dinner. George is a handyman of sorts – an outdoor maid, as he calls it – doing odd jobs around the houses, yards, farms and gardens of a few neighbors. That day, he had been installing brackets to a roofline so he could hang Christmas lights.
“You know what would be so awesome?” George said as he washed his hands in the kitchen sink. “A small tool kit that would fit in my pocket so I could just have different types of tools handy whenever I need them.”
“A mini toolkit, huh?” I replied. “You better be careful what you mention to me this time of year. You never know what might end up under the Christmas tree.”
George looked worried, and for good reason. It’s no secret that gift giving is not my love language; I’m too practical, cheap, boring … go ahead and pick up a thesaurus and fill in the blank. Whatever the right word is, it forces me to give gifts that are usually pretty underwhelming.
What can I say? I’m a middle-aged, introverted mom whose hobbies include reading obituaries and taking long walks while listening to educational podcasts. I’m not exactly the Wonder Wheel over here.
Do you want to know what gift I got for my birthday a couple months ago that really got my heart racing? A knife block. Yes, a block of wood (but really nice, pretty wood!) that sits on my countertop and holds all of our kitchen knives has completely stolen my heart.
This gift was given to me by my mother, who really is a fun gift-giver but who had noticed for years the terrifying knife situation we had going on in our kitchen. Logan hates countertop clutter (looks like he married the wrong woman!), so in lieu of a knife block, he drilled a magnetic strip to the inside of one of our upper cabinets. We position our knives just so along the magnetic strip and then hope every time we open the cabinet door that one of them won’t fly off and impale a foot.
I am not being overly dramatic; in the six and a half years we have lived in this house, we have had a handful of near misses. The most dramatic of these happened when my older brother was visiting and opened the cabinet door a little too quickly, which caused one of our knives to fall and stick completely upright – Excalibur-like – into our floor, mere inches from his foot.
So you can see my mother’s reasoning behind getting me such a necessary gift as a knife block. And honestly, not having to worry about knives raining down every time I open the cupboard door is the gift that keeps on giving. But my kids see my excitement over a gift like that and they worry. Could such a fate fall to them, they wonder?
At Christmastime, I put wish lists for each of them on our refrigerator door to help them help me, but still – there’s no telling what I’m capable of.
“I don’t even know what to ask for this year,” I overheard 10-year-old Emmett say the other day. “I guess I’ll just ask for a Lego set? I don’t know.”
I could almost hear the thoughts of his brothers, who were standing nearby and were most certainly horrified by his statement.
“Silence, fool! We do not speak of such things,” I imagined them hissing. “She who wields the credit card will take your indifference as a sign that she should buy you a bulk set of sweatpants from Amazon or a pair of boots she was going to get you anyway. She might wrap up a box of your favorite cereal, or a used board game, or a framed picture to go on your bedroom wall. You MUST put something on your wish list – anything! – for that is the only way dad might have a chance to intervene and save you from a pile of presents you never knew you didn’t want.”
That’s sound reasoning. Logan is, after all, the fun parent. But I will say that were it not for me, those kids would not have nearly enough sweatpants, cold cereal or mini tool kits. Christmas is coming, kids. Watch out.
Julia Ditto shares her life with her husband, six children and a random menagerie of farm animals in Spokane Valley. She can be reached at dittojulia@gmail.com.