When I was a little girl, my mother would take me and my five siblings to Grants, a long-gone discount store. We did this the first week in December every year, shopping for each other using money we had earned and saved. Running down the aisles, touching everything, brimming with excitement, and bursting with secrets, we pondered, prattled, and preened our way to the checkout register.
We shouldered big secrets in our little souls, guarding our arms with shouts of “Don’t look!” Arriving home, we immediately began wrapping in various places throughout our tiny house, knowing our treasures would soon be given away. The anticipation, giggles, scrambles, and copious quantities of tape make me now wonder how my mother could stand it. But stand it she did, and in so doing, she taught us necessary lessons in gift-giving.
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