Originally Posted by
GardenMama 
This is a great thread, Interrupted. I am happy to hear you are staying home and have a cozy plan in place.
I have been puzzling over this myself. I am not as concerned about my RAD selling a gift as I am about what I could possibly get her that has meaning after the year we have been through...I am still unemployed, as is my husband, and we have very little to spend--pretty much nothing. I know she knows this, but I want to do something to acknowledge her sobriety and successful effort to stay clean. I am thinking about a special letter, a little painting I could make, a framed photo....My 15 yo wants to buy her sister a mandolin. I think this is too much and would use up all of her hard-earned but meager savings. I thought maybe I should buy it instead, but oh wait, I have no money! And around and around I go...This is such a hard time of year. It is ironic and kind of sad that Advent, a time of waiting spiritually, has become a time of EXPECTATION about material goods...I guess I am leaning towards the homemade, the sentimental, and the sacred for gifts. It may be all I have to give this year. And hey, I have time!
Thanks for letting me work this little conflict in my head out on SR time. Peace.
I've had a lot of holidays in my lifetime, and the only gift I have saved through them all is a letter that my mom wrote me on Easter one year, I think I must have been about 7. It's just a small note on steno pad paper with a message about how we don't have a lot of material things but we have each other, our friends, and our family, and those are worth more than any Easter basket could ever be. I cried in secret when I got it, because I was 7, and I knew that it was truth but I still wanted an Easter basket. As I got older I still cried when I read it, but by then it was because I treasured it so much. It is my favorite gift I have ever received from my mother.