I've been severely sleep deprived all week, so when I finally fell asleep last night I slept approximately 1,487 hours. I'm a tad groggy now, and I ain't the kind of person who is real peppy even on a good day. Despite my diminished mental and physical capacity when I woke up this afternoon I decided to get some stuff done around the house including wrapping the present I bought my husband for Father's Day. No, he's not my father, but he's an excellent father and deserves ALL the presents.
Do people still "wrap" presents??? I guess some people do, but I don't. I "sack" presents, and I have every gift sack I've ever received. I've never actually bought a sack; I just recycle them, and I keep all my sacks in my sack closet which is also my Christmas decoration closet and my fabric closet and my Barbie closet. In other words, there's a lot of crap in that closet, and it's not especially organized because that would require tons more effort than I'm willing to put forth. Frankly, people who spend excessive amounts of time being organized creep the hell out of me. On my death bed, I can assure you I'm not going to be thinking about the not neatly stacked cans in my pantry per Sleeping with the Enemy, or the hundreds of pictures not (yet) in photo albums stacked in the gift sack/Christmas decorations/fabric/Barbie closet, or the 10-year-old bottle of Imodium sitting next to the expired vitamins and suppositories in my medicine cabinet. Do suppositories expire?
I'm not going to be thinking about any of that inconsequential stuff because I'm going to be remembering the important stuff; for instance, the ecstatic look on my husband's face both times I told him he was going to be a daddy; the not so subtle cussing under his breath when informed that he may not hire someone else to design the pinewood derby car for Cub Scouts; the holding of the breath, on my part, when he and the boys would carve the annual pumpkin for Halloween (for the record, a finger was never lost); the making of the bunny tracks at Easter; the throwing of thousands of baseballs in 110 degree heat; the buying and lighting of fireworks during the Fourth of July; the teaching of the driving and the shaving and the spelling words; the barbecuing of the meat. You know, all the daddy things. My husband was, and is, awesome at the daddy things.
In recognition of his awesomeness, I want him to have a nice present in a nice "sack," and that's what I was attempting to do when I reached for a recycled sack out of the sack/decoration/fabric/Barbie closet. You can just imagine what happened next. The sound of the box, perched on top of the sacks, was loud when it crashed on the floor. I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was baby Jesus bad until I lifted the top off the box. Baby Jesus, his mom, his earthly father, three wise men, a shepherd, a sheep, and an ass have been wrapped in tissue in that box eleven months out of the year for more years than I can remember, but no more.
I wanted to cry when I saw the broken pieces because my mom bought my family the nativity scene over three decades ago. It wasn't expensive, but it was special because of all the memories associated with it. I no longer have a baby Jesus, but I still have the memories and a broken ass.