One of the things I do that drives people around me nuts (one of many, I know) is downplaying my birthday or, really, any gift-giving event. I think it comes across as some sort of ploy to make me seem like I really don’t like receiving gifts. On the contrary, I LOVE getting presents. Who doesn’t?

Every year, without thinking about it, I mention to Keli, “Don’t worry about getting me anything for my birthday, let’s put that money towards the kids’ Christmas presents.” And every year, without fail, she promptly replies with, “Oh Jesus, Dan. Shut the hell up already!”

My best friend growing up was a kid named Ryan. We were best friends from kindergarten, with our hippie, knee-high-rainbow-sock-and-Birkenstock-wearing teacher, Mrs. Koshari, all the way through high school graduation. Ryan was and still is a Jehova’s Witness. For those of you who don’t know, Jehova’s Witnesses don’t celebrate holidays or birthdays. This made things interesting growing up because our families were polar opposites.

We were and are total junkies for damn near anything Christmas-y. They couldn’t be.

When we would go the day after Thanksgiving to chop down our Christmas tree, bring it home, crank up the Christmas music and decorate. They couldn’t do that to their own home.

My mom would spend hours every year making pounds of holiday sweets. Fudge. Snowball cookies. Little cookies shaped like Christmas trees, little scotty dogs and pinwheels. They couldn’t come over and have fun helping.

But we found ways, every year, to include them. Over the years we were able to meet half-way on things. We would take them a plate of cookies, but it wouldn’t be on a holiday plate and the cookies would be normal ones, devoid of a holiday theme. But, as it would happen, we always did it at Christmas time.

When it came to birthdays, I didn’t really expect much. My birthday falls on December 10th and, while I love it due to it’s closeness to Christmas, it sucked because more often than not people like my Dad would get a wicked cold and be stuck in bed. There was always a cake and some presents and it was all really, really fun every year, but there’s something to be said about having your birthday approach and knowing that your best friend can’t be there. It wasn’t just my birthday that I missed his participation with, I wasn’t allowed to help him celebrate his own birthday.

As a kid, that’s just bonkers! I think it was in grade school I decided to spent my allowance on a little orange and blue Nerf football to give him as a present. Ryan’s birthday is on November 27th so the day after I started giving him a gift as a “friendship present” and not as a birthday gift. His parents left the rules slip a bit on that one, too.

I can count on one finger how many birthday parties I had growing up. It was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-themed party in second grade. It really wasn’t even that I wanted a party, to be honest. Looking back, it just seems like, for many, many reasons, birthdays just weren’t this big production a lot of kids grew up with. Gift receiving wasn’t an expectation, necessarily, it was an appreciated luxury. We knew our family wasn’t rolling in dough, so my sister and I wholey appreciated every thing that was given, knowing how our parents worked overtime hours and had to sacrifice to give it to us.

I’m not saying all of this for sympathy or as a bid for gifts. It’s just been something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, with my birthday approaching. And not just any birthday, but my 30th birthday. I know 30 isn’t old (unless you ask my kids) but it feels old. I’m finding more gray/white hairs every day. I’ve accomplished a lot, but a part of me still feels like I should have accomplished so much more.

So, with my current role as a Stay At Home Trophy Husband & Dad, I’m looking forward to the holidays to re-energize my spirit a bit. This year, as I mentioned in an earlier post, my parents will be back in California. I know I’m getting older when I want to spend my birthday having a few beers with my dad and not going out to do a pub crawl.

With people like my wife and Logtar in my life, they take a twisted kind of pride in pushing me past my comfort zone, when it comes to gift giving. I’d be mad at them but, really, who could be mad at someone who tries to make sure you don’t sabotage your own personal holidays?

Note: Please excuse the lack of line breaks in the lengthier list items. For some reason, any method I tried to use to put in line breaks were stripped out in half of the paragraphs.

• This was the first Christmas in a few years where my daughter didn’t finish opening presents only to say, disapprovingly, “Is that all?” I was quite proud of her.
• My daughter received her first iPod (a Nano that shuffles songs when you shake it).
• The first time I saw my father since last year.
• The first time my grandmothers have been in the same room since possibly before I was born (there is lingering bad blood there…). And you betcha, we took pictures!
• The first time my wife and I were able to buy gifts for each other for several years.
• My wife bought me two tickets to see “Phantom of the Opera” in San Francisco this upcoming Friday. Every since first hearing the music in grade school, I’ve always wanted to go and see the stage performance and this will be my first time going.
• My uncle was at my sister’s house on Christmas day. He is my dad’s older brother and when I was a baby, I’m told, he would come over and spend hours laying on the floor playing with me and talking to me. Shortly afterward he became afflicted with epilepsy and thus began decades of seclusion, testing, botched prescriptions which only compounded the condition. He would go from being extremely paranoid of germs, so much so that he would not hug you and would spend most of his time holed up in his bedroom or washing his hands repeatedly, to exhibiting very bad anorexia-like symptoms, to being very lethargic and unwilling to get up off of the couch. Trying to hold a conversation with him was always, for me, an exercise in futility because his mind would wander and he would ramble on about seemingly random things. This Christmas, however, was the first time, in my entire life, that I was able to have a normal conversation with him. He told me how he always thinks about me and he made sure to tell me that he never forgot about me. The realization that, through all of his medical issues and doctor-assigned drugs, my Uncle Chris was still always there under the layers of drug-induced personality changes, was unexpected. For some many years he seemed to be lost. I feel so bad for him. He’s in his 50s and in many ways, he seems to just now be able to enjoy life and be himself. Even my dad commented to me how it seems like he finally has his big brother back.
• This was the first time since my childhood where I actually felt connected to my extended family. I spoke with the only grandfather I’ve ever known on Christmas night and we visited with my aunt and uncle at their house for several hours the day after Christmas. For various petty and child-like reasons, my extended family has always had drama which more often than not resulted in us missing out on holidays with them, a lack of phone calls or cards on special occasions, etc. Hopefully, it seems like we’re all ready to put all of that behind us and try, again, to reconnect after all these years.
• Every once in a while you have to do something to remind your wife that you can be manly and nostalgic. I cracked open my dad’s old shoe shine kit and polished up a pair of shoes I had which were very scuffed and faded. When I was done, not only was my wife impressed, but I felt like I had a brand new pair of shoes. This was definitely a first in those two ways. I haven’t shined a pair of shoes in many, many years! Shining a pair of shoes is a pretty easy process and with some minimal expense up front, can save you potentially hundreds of dollars in the long run. To learn how to shine a pair of shoes, a great place to start is by reading “Shine Your Shoes Like A Soldier“. One tip that’s not in that article, which was a trick my father learned during his Navy days, is to take a lighter or match and light the shoe polish on fire, for just a few seconds, before applying it to your shoes. This warms up the polish, which helps it apply and adhere better.

Did this Christmas bring around any firsts for you?

This weekend, Keli and I were talking about upcoming birthday and Christmas gifts, when she mentioned she’d like to get a little red wagon (think “Radio Flyer“) for “us”. Here’s how that conversation went:

Me: What would we possibly do with a wagon? It’s not like we live near either of the kids schools and could use it to walk there in the mornings.
Keli: The kids could play with it at home.
Me: Having the kids play with a wagon at home is a bad idea. Our yard isn’t big enough to justify using it at home. If we let them use it in the house you KNOW it’s only a matter of time before Mason rides it down the stairs like a sled.
Keli: Well, I don’t know. We would just use it for stuff…
Me: Like the one time each year we could take it to the pumpkin patch?
Keli: We could take it to the Christmas Tree farm.
Me: You really think a Christmas tree would fit on a kids wagon?
Keli: I guess not…
Me: It’s not like we could put the saws or measuring pole in it…
Keli: … Well, we could use it when we go on walks and stuff…
Me: … where do we go for walks that we would need a wagon? Neither of the kids needs to be pulled in it. And when we do go for family walks, it’s usually hiking at the park on trails. I’m not pulling a wagon up a trail.
Keli: … But I’ve never had a little red wagon and I’ve always kind of wanted one…!
Me: Okay. We can get “the kids” a red wagon if you want to. But you do realize this will be THAT gift I cave in for this year, right? Every year there’s “that” one gift…
Keli: In that case, let me think about it then. What was “that” gift last year?
Me: It was that stupid fake Hanna Montana hair for Bailey, which turned into a knappy, tangled mess later that morning.
Keli: Oh yeah…!