Christmas time....

Being that Christmas is just around the corner, I found myself reliving some Christmas memories of my dad the other day. Throughout my teens, Amy and I would always buy him a Christmas gift together. Every year, he would always request the same items: socks, blank VHS tapes, t-shirts, and underwear. Every year we would pry and push and tell him that surely there was something else he wanted or something else we could get him, and he would always adamantly insist that that was all he wanted or needed and he would be perfectly happy if that's what he got. Every year this conversation would take place until just before Christmas when we would finally succumb into buying him some combination of those items. And every year he would open up his gifts and be absolutely elated at having received some blank VHS tapes and some new plain black socks. Pure joy would spread across his face as if we had given him the one and only item he had been wanting all year long.

Looking back now as an adult, I try to figure out that whole situation. Sometimes I think that maybe there was something else he wanted but he didn't want to burden us with trying to find it or buy it. But then other times I think that he really did just live a very simplistic life and didn't desire a lot of things or possessions. Or maybe it was a combination of both.

In our later teen years, Amy and I started getting a little more creative and helped my dad branch out with his wardrobe. We introduced him to colored t-shirts instead of the plain white ones and showed him how to pair the colored blue tee with a plaid blue short sleeve, button down shirt from Wal-Mart. He loved it! He started buying up every plaid shirt at Wal-Mart and every possible color tee from Fruit of the Loom. We also introduced suspenders to him and that became a signature piece in his wardrobe the last few years of his life as well.

If he were alive today, I think he would probably still be wearing that same style of clothes. Of course, I'd probably buy him some Colorado or Denver tees for his wardrobe as well.

So what did my dad get us for Christmas every year? Until we became very picky teenagers, he would always buy us a personal gift that he picked himself such as a movie or a stuffed animal, or a new outfit. I remember one year he gave me a pink platypus stuffed animal. A pink platypus! Why a pink platypus and not a regular teddy bear? I think it's because he knew I was a little eccentric and I didn't like having what everyone else had. So he bought me a pink platypus! I have no idea where he got it. And I highly doubt that without the internet I would be able to go out and find one myself. But it was little subtle things like that that make me remember just how much he loved me and my siblings.