[GeorgiaMa'am]

I enjoy wrapping presents. My mom taught me how when I was little. At Christmas, the first step was always putting holiday music on the cabinet stereo. When I was very little, I was in charge of tearing pieces of tape off the tape dispenser and sticking them on the edge of the dining table where we worked. When the edge of the table got full, I closely watched my mom as she folded the colorful paper around the presents, carefully measuring and creasing corners. I also watched as she made different kinds of bows from straight ribbon, cutting and tying the swirls into neat decorations. Pretty soon I was wrapping gifts on my own, with my mom in charge of the ribbons; and after some practice, I too could tame the unruly ribbon into beautiful bows.

As I said, I enjoy wrapping presents. I imagine that each person who opens a gift will appreciate its beauty (most of them, anyway) and feel special at receiving such a package. Some few of them will even note the effort that went into wrapping it. I'm not delusional; I know some people won't even notice and will just rip the paper off, especially little kids. Truth to tell, a lot of those people get gift bags instead of a package that has been personalized by my careful ministrations. And that's okay with me; I enjoy giving gifts even more than I enjoy wrapping them.

These days, my hands and my mind don't let me spend a hour or more on each present. I even sometimes resort to (gasp!) mechanically made bows. Fewer people are getting specially wrapped gifts from me and more are getting the aforementioned gift bags. I still do some presents myself, though. I also miss the days of the department store ladies who wrapped presents. I would look at the pre-wrapped sample boxes on the back wall of the customer service department, imagining whether I could replicate some of the designs myself. On Very, Very Special Occasions I would sometimes spring for one of the ladies to wrap a gift. They had boxes of supplies and knew the tricks for adding silk flowers or little animals on a spring to the gift, making it extra special. One of those Special Occasions was usually Mother's Day; I was too young to realize that she probably would have preferred it to be wrapped by me.

She always oohed and ahhed over wrapped presents from me, even in later years when they came in one of those gift bags because her hands couldn't unwrap the taped presents easily. These are some of the best memories I have of my mom. They begin when I was so young that my sister hadn't even been born yet. The love of the time and effort to make gifts extra special was something my mom and I shared my whole life, until she passed away. Now I still wrap packages for special people in my life; and I hope that the care that I put into every one finds it's way into the recipient's heart. And if not, so what, eh? It's the thought . . . well, you know.