The last damned present has been wrapped.  I say it this way because I thought I had finished wrapping presents weeks ago, but my children and others in my life had different plans for me.  Remember, my right arm is still in a cast up to my collar bone (and I’m right handed), and I can’t sign my name to any legal document but apparently I can still gift wrap better than any one else in the family.  Iknow this because on Saturday my son and I went birthday and Christmas shopping for his wife.  He purchased about nine items and left them with me to wrap.  He didn’t even tell me which were birthday and which were Christmas.  I personally wasn’t overly worried.  If you leave things with me without instructions I just make up my own.  And you had better not complain if I put my precious one armed self to the task of doing something you could easily do yourself.  In fact a little thank you would be nice, or a gift.  I like purple roses and anything chocolate.

I blame myself for this crap.  The artist in me doesn’t like to put a mundane package under the tree.  I usually try to jazz them up with some candy canes, or florist’s picks.  I make my own bows.  I hate those stinking factory made self-adhesive destined to fall odd ugly star creations that come 50 to a bag for $2.50.  I buy ribbon and I tie and I curl, and I use a ton of tape and when I finish a package it is almost to pretty to open.  It probably takes me anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes to wrap one package.  Everything has to be just right.  Then when we actually get all the kids home and get to celebrate Christmas they rip into those packages like a suicide bomber wiyh nothing to lose and a hunger for virgins and two seconds later all my work is torn into shreds on the floor and the vicious little bastards are off to another one.  My husband puts everything he gives me in gift bags unless they have free gift wrapping in the store.  I’m abused.

There are just some things that mean more to some people than others.  I don’t think it has ever occurred to my family that I am a gift wrapping superstar.  I’m just mom.  I do what I do.  I bake, I clean, I sew, I wrap. I bitch and I excel at pretty much all of it.  I make a lot of threats that I am going to go on strike, but I don’t want to have to clean up the mess when the strike is over or I finally give in (either of which would result in my having to clean up the mess).  I have always done it and it is assumed I always will with both hands tied behind my back if need be because I’m an effing super hero who can do just about anything.  Alas…a cape fits over a cast really well! 

When I am gone I hope that I am able to watch over my family from which ever dominion I find rest in.  I want to see this little pin heads get by on their own.  No one will be able to ever have a decent Halloween costume.  All my great-grandchildren will be wearing the nylon ones from Wal-Mart and their precious faces will be hidden in those oven masks I’ve despised for years.  No one will no how to make alot of their favorite dishes because they have never taken the time to learn.  Peaches and cream cheesecake will just be a talked about memory handed down from generation to generation.  Poor little chilrun ain’t ever gonna’ taste Emmy’s good cookin’ cause their parents were to lazy to take the time to ask me to teach them how.  No one will be able to recreate the retreating bunny butt that has been the easter bunny’s signature for 31 years and counting, and no one is going to know how to perfectly wrap a Christmas present, using just the right amount of paper so that you have enough, but not too much overlap.  They won’t understand that you can never use too much tape, and that nothing says I love you like a handmade bow (especially when you only have one hand). 

So all the damned presents are wrapped, until UPS or FedEx brings something someone else needs to have wrapped and they bring it to me and say “will you do it?  You do it better than me.”  And of course I will, because this is how I take care of my family.  It’s what I do…and I do it well. 

I’m intelligent enough to get most of the reasons for hair distribution patterns over the human body.  We have hair on our heads because so much heat is lost through the top of the head, at the armpit to hold moisture and maintain cooling, and so on and so forth.  However; I can see absolutely NO reason for the three hairs that grow on my chin!  Not only do they grow there despite my best efforts to rid myself of them, but they are as coarse as wire and tend to break off when I try to pluck them.  I know they lurk there like three giant trees on the plain of my face and I can’t keep my hand from reaching up in a constant quest to find them.  They feel as if they should be at least a half inch in diameter and made of solid steel, and once I find my way to tweezers and a mirror I can’t find them.  It has been years since I have been so confused by something so small feeling so large…really!!  But here’s my point, why do I need three chin whiskers?  Is the right lower quadrant of my chin in a freeze warning area?  Should I be concerned that if I pluck the offending whiskers I put myself in danger of suffering from frostbite on that dime sized area of my face?

I understand the mustache, I don’t like it, but I understand it.  I don’t understand women who don’t do anything about it.  You really can’t ignore two fully formed caterpillars head-butting one another just below your nose.  Even if you don’t have a mirror, and refuse to look in one when you go out you have to feel the weight on your upper lip and the tickling sensation when the wind blows!  However; I see women all the time walking through life with full-on staches.  What gives?  Have they never walked down the razor aisle at Walgreen’s, Wal-Mart, Target or about a zillion other stores that sell health and beauty aids.  Hell’s bells they’ve got removal systems for hair of every kind.  They’ve got depillatory creams, they’ve got wax, they’ve got trimmers (better for some places than others), they’ve got little pads now that apparently sandpaper the hair right off your skin, and some battery operated laser removal systems so why in the hell would any woman go through life looking like Dennis Weaver?

My great nephew was playing with his mother one day when he was about three years old.  She was standing up and he was on the ground looking up at her and she felt his tiny little hand tug on hers.  She gently looked down into the beautiful brown eyes of her baby boy and asked him what he needed.”Mama” he said, “when I grow big will I have mush-mashes like you and daddy?”  Much wisdom doth come from the mouth of babes.  Of course, we never saw or heard from the kid again, but she’s had a clean upper lip ever since.  If I had my way (and if I wasn’t allergic to whatever is in it) I would bathe in Nair right up to my eyebrows.  I’m always cold anyway, I might as well be hairless to boot.  I’d keep the hair on my head though.  I like it. 

Our very southern neighbor came calling the other day, and when she walked in she said “girl, be glad you’ve got hair.  I miss mine.”  Now first of all, she has never begun a sentence that didn’t start one of three ways:1. “Girl…”  2.  “Let me tell you” or 3.  “The Lord God…”  Anyway she went on to tell me that as you get older your hair starts to thin and you’ll just never be able to have a pretty hairstyle again.  I’m looking over at my  77-year old mother who still has to go to the beauty shop no less often than every five weeks to keep her hair coiffed in that perfect Jane Hathaway style she likes, and still has her brows and lip waxed as often as she can get someone to do it for her, and I’m thinking since she was the less hairy of my two parents…I’m set.

I guess it’s true that you always want what you don’t have.  I want the figure I had in 1975,  the money from 1995, the knowledge I have now and no wrinkles, no sags, no scars, my husband to court me again (rather than just kind of harumph when I enter the room or when he does pay attention say “honey, can you get me a Coke?”), children with no problems, better cheaper insurance, and if it’s possible a health upgrade…but I’ll settle for perfect eyebrows that never need waxing, no mush-mash, and an end to these three damned chin hairs.  Is that too much to ask?