Saving the Best (and Hardest) for Last

Things have fallen into place this season, allowing me the great gift of being really ready for Christmas this year, well in advance.  Yes, I know I'm a Type A and like to be organized and all that.  But this year seems to be a year when all that administrative hutzpa I've been blessed with actually worked on Christmas!

To my delight and wonderment, the house has been festive since late November.  Cards were designed, crafted and delivered by December 1.  Family meals are planned out, and we already have the turkey and some 'sugary treats' waiting in the freezer. 

All our gifts have been unhurriedly selected and wrapped, and some of them have already been delivered.  Everything's ready. 

Almost.

Every year, no matter what degree of readiness applies to all other Christmas things, I find myself in the same place about one thing.  I do not yet have something for Ken.

I could blame it on his gender, or the fact that already has the whole set of 007 DVDs.  He's a collector, and over the years family and friends, myself included, have tapped into his interests and have, on his behalf, completed 'sets' of any number of things.  I could say it's that. 

I could say that you can only give a man so much chocolate (although I doubt he'd agree).  I could even blame it on the fact that his birthday is a mere month to the day prior to Christmas, and that I use up all my best ideas on him then.

But its not that. It's more than that.

It's the sheer impossibility of finding something that means anything at all when the person to whom you are attempting to give means more than anything else. 

Now, sometimes I do come up with a brainy idea and the depth of the giving matches the giving of the gift.  But more often I suffer this seasonal anguish, and falter in my desire to make it so. 

Because what do you give to a man who was once your teenage boyfriend, all newly mannish and  mysteriously 'other', with some enchanting, awkward kisses to offer?

And what do you give to the guy who was brave enough to marry you, and adventurous enough to start a family with you, and strong enough to build a life with you, and courageous enough to stay with you?    What do you offer a man who has muddled his way through enough of his 'stuff' to muddle with you through yours?  Who has come to understand your soul - what makes it sing, what feeds its passions, what fuels its energies - and determines in his own to be the one who finds the resources that will release you to become all you were meant to be?

What do you give the hero who cares for your elderly parents as if they were his own?  Who's stood by your side, and behind you and in front of you, when hostile forces have come against you, never flinching even in the putrid face of the enemy set on your destruction.  And then, on the other end of heroism, faithfully does the mundane with patience and humility?

What?  Pajamas?

See what I mean?

I know I'll come up with something.  I always do.  And Ken will be all good and happy about it.  He always is.  Well, most of the time he is.  But either way it won't be enough.  Not in reality.  Not at all. 

So I will try to ease the anguish of my inadequate gift through doing my very best to let him know every day how unspeakably grateful I am that I'm his wife.  Make it as public as I can.  As private as I can.

Merry Christmas Honey.  You are, without question, my best gift.