Christmas Gifts

What to give the grandchildren for Christmas? In my case, nothing. Shocked?

As a child during the Great Depression, I was thrilled to get one little doll for Christmas and a $1 bill for my birthday. It shocks me to see the kind of gifts children today expect to receive for Christmas.

These are hard times for lots of people. Yet mothers working for minimum wage cry out how terrible it is not to be able to give their children the most expensive toys.

My children are rich. When I visited my son’s home in California, his children’s rooms were filled with toys, so much so that there was no space for my grandson and granddaughter to play. So they played in the living room, with toys scattered about so thick that it was difficult to avoid stepping on them. If I accidentaly crushed one of those plastic marvels underfoot, it did not matter. Hidden among the stuff on the carpet were three more toys just like it.

Now I send family gifts to both my son and my daughter. David’s family gets cheese. Martha’s family gets grapefruit. Both families get subscriptions to Smithsonian. Things that can be consumed or read and then disposed of, not adding any clutter to their homes.

David brought his little boy to visit me in Albuquerque. I didn’t have any fancy toys for Adam to play with. But, quite by accident, I had something better. My house had dessert landscaping, cactus in the “flower” beds and gravel instead of a lawn. All Adam wanted to do was play with the “rocks” in Grandma’s front yard.

Next year David brought both the children. When the car pulled into the driveway, Adam turned to his sister and said excitedly, “Look, Alli! Grandma has rocks!” You would have thought my yard was covered with diamonds.

Now Adam is eleven. David and Adam leave the toy-strewn house and drive out into the California dessert, where they hunt rocks and fossils for Adam’s collection. I wonder if my grandson may become a geologist.

The best thing we can give children is not fancy gadgets from the store but time spent with them exploring the world around us.