The husband had been speaking to his wife in a foreign language I guessed was from a Slavic country.  He had a Nerf weapon in his hand and an animated look on his face.  After the discussion, he put it back somewhat sorrowfully. 

“Too young for such stuff?” I laughed, having spied the cheaper, pink doll kits and the lot that filled their cart.

The husband forced a smile, said nothing to me, and went back to talking to his wife in the foreign language.

The mother, too, was somber, dressed in an older pink and black plaid coat with a fake fur collar.  The father was in a black leather jacket, faded jeans, and inexpensive, bulky black tie shoes.

I’d found the target.

It had been a rather miserable experience shopping in the mall for me.  I could not get into it, as there's no intimate other to do it for.

Gift giving is big.  A family pattern picked up from my father.  The restraint on purchasing personal items when I was a child started in September, as Christmas was Dad’s shop-a-palooza.  Afflicted with heart disease from the time I was 2, shopping was what my father and I did together.  Indeed, after my father’s doctor told him to start walking, he would do it not out in the open roads, but on the traditional Main Street where our grandfather had been a fixture as Mayor and a local florist.  I still recall the death march through every store at Christmastime where we were all known on a first name basis and the store clerks could tell us what had recently been purchased by other relatives to assist us in the process.

So I thought of my father and grandfather as I was having trouble getting excited about picking up gifts.  I have always loved it, and it has always been a problem.  Surprise gifts that at times would not be opened for a day or two by some until asked again by me to do so.  Gifts rejected as too extravagant.  Gifts handed over with the recipient grinning and groaning, “Do I have to open it now? In front of you?”

Giving or  codependence?  What is the issue here?  Where’s the line?  Is this a problem for me?

So all that swirling through my head simply had me leave the mall rather listless and unexcited.

So I decided to hit the local Toys R Us to snap out of it.  I had always loved shopping for my three boys when they were young, and usually went once with their mother and then once alone to pick up more stuff.

The mall crawl in traffic unfortunately gave me time to reframe that into a downer.  It was the only real time of year when budgeting contention switched sides in the toxic parenting game.  I was then the one too extravagant as I would happily load up the cart with cheap crap that would add fuel to the Christmas fire as the three boys aimed matching nerve guns, disc guns, or potato guns at one another in over stimulated frenzies.

Or parachute Army men or plastic snow ball launchers would get tossed in the air outside as a respite inside from the din level. 

Inside or outside, it mattered not.  It was cheap party favor crap that added to the day and then was soon broken or misplaced.

It would be fun until such time as I brought the stuff home and caught hell for it, ruining the fun of it all.  This mood worsened by triggering a horrific bike buying episode at this same store blogged about here, in January of this year.

So I was going into the scene of what had been many a miserable end of parental bickering and arguing around the holidays that had started out hopeful but ten minutes or so prior.  And I was going in to try to recapture the fun of Christmas by picking up a gift for a hoot of a 3 year-old boy whose father just recently found out a growth he had removed was in fact a melanoma.

It was one tall order I gave myself to snap out of that funk as I walked dejectedly from the car to the store, stopping once and almost turning around and saying to hell with it.

Going in, though, I thought of a trip at Christmas with my then quite elderly grandfather to a fruit center to pick up the makings for his traditional fruit cup.  At that point he taught me the lesson of random, anonymous giving blogged over two years ago here.

So going in, I had this on my mind and was looking for a target.  Meeting the husband and wife in the Nerf Gun aisle triggered the decision to act on the impulse, and I bought a Toys R Us gift card after confirming it could be used immediately and would not be traceable back to me.

I then went back through the store to find them.  They were over in another aisle now, with the wife carefully checking the cart and agonizing over what she was putting into the cart.  No expensive Wii games; just the basic kid stuff and quite obviously trying to keep the acquisitions equitable.

The father was standing there rather forlornly looking from afar at the process his wife was undertaking.  Watching the sacrifices in real time his wife had to make for their children given the limited funds.

I stopped near them and observed again.  Eyed them a little to make sure my gut instinct was correct.

I took a step over to the husband and said as gently and as softly as possible, “You guys trying to get this all done on a tight budget?”

His head sagged as his body heaved, as if to scream “YES!” 

His eyes said it all again when he looked up at me.

Before he had to face the humiliation of verbalizing any of this, I simply said somewhat apologetically “Here, it’s a gift card.”

His mouth opened as he gasped and his eyes went wide.

I quickly pulled my hand back from the card leaving it in the husband’s, looked away to maintain my composure, and slapped his shoulder quickly while adding “Merry Christmas.”

I strode quickly and deliberately away with my CAT Dozer under my arm and went back to the same clerk.  I reconfirmed the couple could not trace the card back to me to find out my name, paid for my single toy with a huge smile on my face, and got the hell out of there before they could get a good look at me.

I walked to the car whistling "It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas", smiling, and with tears in my eyes utterly resolved to do this every year from now on.

For the first time all year, I am actually looking forward to putting on some Christmas music.

And here's Bing doing it proud ...