Mysteriousness at Christmas

After that year when Mom concocted our names to be translated, something else rocked our boats; well, at least mine.

I believe it came into our house wrapping a gift someone gave to us, Mom just held onto it (as she so often does) for our family's continued future use.

Even though being the first to open a gift is awesome & fun, so is happening to have the last gift to open. ...Unless that is, there's a mystery gift wrapped too.

Then no one knows what's what. Which, at least for me, leads to major disappointment.

See, what this bag became known as was the "mystery gift bag". And to whomever its contents happened to be for, that's who would be opening the "last gift of the year" that Christmas, at least in our living room. This bag seemed to be assembled of a few of these attached together. One for the base, then three or four more with their base's removed affixed with tape or glue into place & then with a standard wrapping paper overtop all of it, unifying it, creating a complete look. The bag's top would merely need to be folded down, just as a brown lunch bag would be in order to maintain its contents in a simple manner, although in large style because of the bag's general enormity, thus likely why this make-shift bag had been designed with a few additional full-sized grocery bags...And also likely to add to the "reaching in the bag" distance, wonder, & excitement.

Although the year that the mystery bag was presented it wasn't wrapped in a gift for me, at least once during its "tenure" it did hold a gift for me. And in the course of "it's better to give than to receive", yes, in fact, the most memorable year I've of this mystery gift bag happens to be the year I asked Mom that I might be able to use the bag to wrap a special gift.

It wasn't hard to explain or "convince" her since she knew all about the gift I intended to wrap in the bag; she'd helped with the idea for the gift too, or at least to encourage me to make the gift.

This was around the time that Mom & Dad had gotten a lot of home improvements completed. One of those improvements was building a workshop (not a "man cave" 😏). Because of this, Dad had a place we could gently decorate. Somewhere Mom had come across a clock, like this one. One that was basically designed for such a purpose.

As one of Mom's main crafts being cross-stitch, we'd found one of these which featured workshop tools. It seemed to be just the right challenge for me to make for Dad to display in his workshop. And, because of it being so special, handmade & all, though not handmade in a child-like way 😎, as well as it ideally fitting like a glove into the mystery bag, Mom & I decided, for that Christmas, this cross-stitch workshop theme masterpiece was meant to be gifted to Dad via the mystery gift bag.

And so it was.

What I also learned that Christmas was something I already knew, though experienced for myself for the first time. It's an adolescent discovery. (& I was an adolescent at the time!) It was about blemishes; mistakes, if you will. See, there was a spot in that cross-stitch project, in the shading of the clamps. They were blue, though for where the light was indicating to hit them, that was to be a slightly darker floss number. Unfortunately, as I was following the pattern & paying attention (or, because of this thought, not really paying attention!), I happened to incorporate a large enough number of these shading accent stitches incorrectly. Once I realized my mishap I also realized how time consuming & generally difficult it would be to mend this, not-that-noticeable flaw. I might also create more of a flaw in yanking the floss from this encouraging the holes to enlarge against my will.

I wrapped the completed project in the mystery gift bag & got the delight of telling him that the gift bag was his to open that year. And then to watch him open it & see the hand work I did to display in his workshop where he did plenty of his own hand work. I left the "tone" stitching flaw in the project. It's been there to this day.

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