A Senior Christmas

      First of all, happy holidays with my fervent wish for a better new year for all.

     My wife and I truly had a senior Christmas this year, entertaining our St. Louis family comprised of my son, his wife and our four grandkids, the oldest of whom turned six on Christmas Day. We soldiered through the meals, the child-watching, the cleaning and the gift-wrapping.

     It's hard to count on four little ones to pull their weight in responsibility though they try. I took five-year-old Gwen and three-year-old Charlie to Tim Horton's to pick up our breakfast one morning. Upon returning home, I went around to Charlie's side of the car to let him out. Gwen, who sat on the opposite side in the back seat, advised me, “I unbuckled his seat belt so you wouldn't have to bend down.” Now there's a true friend for seniors like me.

     Meanwhile, I asked Charlie if he could help to carry something into the house, perhaps a box of Tim Bits or a breakfast sandwich. “I have Flash,” he said, walking away while carrying the action figure who was a frequent companion.

     A true senior moment occurred on Christmas Day . . . or actually revealed itself on Christmas Day. The adults in four families each exchange names for Christmas and I got my brother-in-law Randy's name. We all opened our gifts at the same time as the kids, seven of them, opened their's. Randy called out, “Thanks, Dave” as he held a gift bag of three tiny bottles of liquor “shooters.”

      But some time later Randy must have felt cheated. The gift exchange had a generally agreed upon spending amount of $30 and he must have known the three tiny liquor shooters probably had a total value of less than $10 (about $8 if I recall). Sometime after Randy and wife Denise left the party, my wife Wendy got a text from sister Denise, asking if there were a gift card lying on the table where Randy sat. Denise knew I had bought the gift card because I let her know so she wouldn't duplicate any gifts. “He never saw it . . Does Dave remember putting it into the gift bag?” she asked.

     HA! A senior like myself remembering something like that during a hectic week? I checked my usual hiding spots for gifts but I was sure as a senior can be that I had given the card to my wife to wrap. My wife thought so too and said it should have been wrapped in tissue paper inside the gift bag.

     Denise advised to check under cupboards and other kitchen furniture. “Maybe it flew out when he took out the tissue. I can see that happening.”

     No, there was no card under the table or under any cupboard. My wife went through two bags of trash, discarded gift wrapping mostly. We asked other Christmas party guests to check their own gift bags. I worried too that if it somehow fell to the floor that either granddaughter Gwen or one-year-old grandson Lewis might have got hold of it. So I checked Gwen's travel backpack which she packs herself. I found lots of crayons, a few Legos, even a doll's head, but no gift card. I checked boxes of matchbox cars and miniature action figures, even floor vents since I felt baby Lewis might feel tempted to drop something there. Again, no gift card.

     The next day Wendy went through the more “icky” kitchen garbage bag and found the discarded tissue from the gift bag. It appeared that it may have held a gift card at one time. Ah ha! Now we wondered. Randy is a senior too. Could he have gotten the gift card and absent-mindedly shoved it into his wallet?

     So Wendy texted her sister to “check his wallet” herself.

     “He never saw it,” came her quick reply. Okay, okay, okay. The onus is still on us to produce the gift card.

     So we kept checking. The gift bags had been all brought up from the basement in a box. Could it have fallen out and still be in the box? I found the box and . . . no. Then Wendy probed her memory. What she DIDN'T remember was putting Randy's name and gift amount on the card. So it could possibly be in a purse she rarely carries, but now remembered carrying the day we bought the card.

     Hallelujah! It was there. As the Wordle program responds when you get the right answer on the last guess, “Phew.” Well, they say Christmas is for kids. For seniors, it's a different experience altogether.