Shopping, the easy way out

Meantime, my avoid-shopping-at-all-costs husband called the three kids and relayed the message: 8220;Can you pick out something for me that will make your mother happy? She still hasn8217;t used the wheelbarrow I bought her last year.8221; He sent cash.

Then I heard from my daughter. 8220;I was thinking of buying Granny a cookbook, but I don8217;t know what cookbooks she already owns. Can you check on the sly and then buy her a cookbook8230;? If not a cookbook, then just buy her another set of cake pans. I8217;ll pay you back.8221;

Then my brother-in-law called and said he8217;d like to get my sister a nice sweater and needed me to pick it out for him8230; Then my youngest son called and said that he was stumped on what to buy for his dad, but it really didn8217;t matter, anyway, because he had 13 cents to his name until he could sell his wardrobe on eBay. I sent cash8230;

With each day, the outsourcing of who8217;s-buying-what-for-whom became as tangled as the wad of six strands of Christmas lights that we8217;d hastily tossed into a garbage bag the previous year.

On Christmas Day, all of us truly were surprised when we unwrapped our gifts. My sister got a cookbook featuring blessed recipes for church suppers, my husband got a sweater that makes him look like a pregnant pilgrim, and my mother got a re-gifted wheelbarrow. The kids ended up with a nice wad of cash.

Excerpted from a piece by Marti Attoun, in the Chicago Tribune, December 23