Counting Down to Christmas

I just got off the phone with my mother. Had to let her know that the presents she sent me got here OK. Or at least some of them did. Apparently there's another box which, with luck, should be here tomorrow. Judging from the way she was talking, it sounds like she just sort of clicked randomly on a few items from my Amazon wish list, so I have the feeling this could be really interesting... She won't let me unwrap them before Christmas, though. My mother has this really weird obsession about unwrapping things. She has this notion that if everybody doesn't have tons of stuff to unwrap on Christmas morning (or, OK, in a pinch, on Christmas Eve) it'll be a tragedy of epic proportions. Except herself, of course. She doesn't care what she gets or when she gets it or whether it's wrapped, she says. And she has to be threatened not to unwrap her own gifts as soon as she gets them. (By my sister, that is. I don't care!) But no matter how many times I tell her differently, she's convinced that if I don't have stuff to unwrap I'm going to suffer the bitterest disappointment of my life. You should have heard her when she thought Amazon wasn't going to get the stuff shipped in time. I thought she was going to go ballistic.

I think it must be that, in some part of her mind, her kids are forever six years old and lost in the joy of tearing through wrapping paper on Christmas morning. Which is maybe not such a bad thing, even if it is the same impulse that seems to make her think that, even though I'm 32 years old and have been out on my own in the world for 14 years, I'm still incapable of deciding for myself when I need to put on a jacket.

I love my Mom.