daddy's little girl? yeah, right. . .

I went to the Apple genius bar today to get help with a software conflict. The Berkeley Apple store is down on 4th Street. It's full of what looks to me to be high end stores. It's a bit of a shopping mecca, I guess. I have only ventured down there for the Crate and Barrel closeout shop and for the very rare trip to Apple. The whole street was lit up, with holiday lights but also lit people, lots of people.

I don't really shop. I see clothing I like in some of the women's clothing shops but they look expensive and they don't look like they sell clothes for not-thin women. I like Sur la Table. I used to be an art docent at the Henry Gallery at the U. of WA with one of the co-founders of Sur la Table, the wife from the couple that founded it. They were very serious art collectors and hosted all the docents at their home so we could see their art-soaked house. Just about everything in the home was a work of art. But, yikes, nothing on sale at Sur La Table. Do they ever have sales? I still use the cookware I acquired when I got married in 1979. but I did need a new garlic press so I got one.

I tend to forget that many people consider current styles in many, even most, areas of life. I bought really good cookware in 1979, and really good stoneware and really good flatware back then. It's all still perfectly good!

I did get a slight taste of the lure of impulse shopping. I walked by a tiny lighting store and they had a few stringy things hanging in their doorway: wires wrapped around stones on a string, or pieces of glass wrapped with wire on a string. Pretty things. Pretty baubles that caught my eye and I thought "This would make a perfect couple's gift for the couple I am spending Xmas with in Canada!" I walked into the shop so I'd have a little time to think about buying that bauble. The two people behind the cash register both perked up to have one customer in their shop. The item that caught my eye was only $25. At first I said to myself "Yes, I will get it" but by the time I looked around for another minute, I began to watch myself. Watch how I was getting caught up in the capitalist version of 'the holidays'.

The real reason I didn't buy the bauble is because the colors of the pretty strung glass bits were not my friend's colors. It was all blue-y. Blue is me.

I was reminded of the year my then-two-year-old insisted on giving her father a Smurfette puzzle for Xmas, post-legal-separation. He was furious over that puzzle -- with me, not her as far as I know. He said "What an insult, giving me a children's toy." I explained to him that our daughter dearly loved the Smurfette doll he had given her, she kept it with her 24/7 and she had been so happily thrilled to give her dad that smurfette puzzle . . . not a Smurf but a Smurfette. He did not believe me when I said she had so happily chosen it and so happily believed she was giving him something special. I don't remember asking him if he criticized that puzzle to her. I hope not. I also pointed out to him that all of her toys were at the house she and I lived in and I thought it wasn't so bad that she had a puzzle she loved at his home.

This reminds me of a few years later, when the Berlin Wall had fallen. Dayton's, which eventually was bought out by Macy's, sold little pieces of the Berlin Wall as meaningless Xmas gifts, sorta the pet rock of that year? I tried to talk her out out of giving her dad a piece of the Berlin Wall because I knew he would see it as an insult, as me making a commentary on how I was, by then, free of any chains to him. And, sure enough, that is exactly how he interpreted that piece of the Berlin wall. and he refused to believe I had tried to talk her out of it. She thought it was a thrilling gift, to have a piece of real, exciting history he could touch!! She was thrilled to give him that gift.

Ironically, even kinda funnily, his favorite 'gift from her' was something I had purchased without her input and I had bought it to mock him. He had a mustache and I bought a ninety nine cent mustache clipper on clearance at a Target and had her give it to him. He bragged about his daughter's thoughtful gift for years. And I never told him she had nothing to do with it. How I loved it that he was so thrilled with that very cheap mustache trimmer. I had been pleased to get off so cheaply.  And I had the grace to never tell him it had been a 99 cent present. Nor did I ever tell him that she had nothing to do with that choice.

Until she left me, I bought him Father's Day, birthday and Christmas gifts (his birthday is tomorrow, Nov 26th!) every year after we separated, even when he was at his height of assholery regarding our custody litigation, such as having me followed 24/7 to collect evidence. Evidence of me driving to daycare, driving to my office, driving to my health club and driving to the shelter for battered women which was hidden in an old CAtholic orphanage.

One year I ordered a baseball from Neiman Marcus signed by Sammy Sosa in the year Sammy Sosa was a very big deal. Our daughter was at college and I did not consult her about that Sammy Sosa baseball but it thrilled him, as I had known it would. He could be like a little boy when it came to sports. Once he asked me how I knew exactly what to get him (this when still married -- he never credited me with any of the gifts I paid for and shipped to him on our daughter's behalf after we separated) -- did he think our four year old begged me to take her shopping for his birthday, or even remembered his birthday without my reminders? Yes he did -- Once he asked me how I knew what gifts he would like and I sang "Because I've got you under my skin . . . ". Which was true, in a bad infection kind of way. Upon reflection, I am not sure our daughter ever even registered the fact that 'she' had given her dad that Sammy Sosa baseball and yet he gushed and gushed over the awesome gift his daughter gave him. He seriously believed that.

Guess how many times he took her shopping for me, or just reminded her that maybe with Christmas coming, she might want to get me a gift? Never. Not once.

My daughter did not give me many gifts. No one had ever mentored her with the idea of giving her mother gifts for Mother's Day, birthday or xmas. The last time I saw her at Christmas, she did give me a nice gift. She special ordered a pendant made by a rhinestone jewelry maker I liked. I had lots of the jewelry maker's earrings and she ordered a pendant to match one pair of the earrings. In hindsight, I think she ordered that gift because she knew she was leaving me. a parting gift?