The pains of Christmas shopping

Christmas unwraps a bundle of surprises for children but undeniably, it unnecessarily drags them into the pre-Christmas rush, having to hop from one store to another and wait with their parents in long winding queues.

I’m blessed with a child whose patience I will never match. She’s never the kind who would throw tantrums when her bad mood strikes. But how can I blame her if she tells me, “I feel like I want to go home now”, in the middle of a kilometric line of impatient adults, mostly with their kids, too.

While I can get entertained by watching people as they pick gifts and be happy with every inch forward in the line, I just feel sorry for my little girl who, at her tiny height, could only see mostly feet moving about, tired little children under their mom’s skirt, and bigger-than-her shopping bags that can potentially hit her, as she wonders if the monotonous beeps of the cash registers near the desk where she rests and scrubs her back will ever end.

Mom, are you listening?

I’m not the best listener in the world and there was never a time my mind didn’t fly to dreamland even at the most, supposed to be, important and serious of all conversations. While it can be personally gratifying and refreshing, I know that it can also be annoying.

For my daughter, however, my inattentiveness becomes a subject of wonder. While I was in the middle of a book I had (finally!) started to read, she was telling me about a new online word search game and kept asking me to look at how well she was doing.

It was one of the hundred times she would ask me to be her audience but at that particular moment, I was just plainly inattentive.