Gifts

Mary and I spent a very confusing hour shopping last evening. Perplexing, I should say.

We’ve just celebrated Daughter One’s birthday and Daughter’s Two’s is just around the corner. We were intent on putting together a birthday-themed care package and so we went to a local wide line store to troll for ideas.

Ideas that failed to reveal themselves. Hmmmm…

When Daughters One and also Two were little, and even when they were older but still living at home, the choosing of gifts for them was a fairly straightforward matter. First of all, we had the advantage of peer pressure helping to shape their desires.  So we could watch ads and listen to comments at school events and sort of suss out for what they might be yearning. And of course, since there were living at home, we could glean ideas from the odd comment or the surreptitious, covetous glance while shopping.

Not so these days. For Daughter One, we got lucky. Mary happened to know of a couple things she wanted; I was able to choose a book and a couple videos she might like. It was not our best birthday effort ever but not for lack of caring and it worked out okay.

Two presents more of a conundrum. She’s studying engineering which we sort of understand in broad strokes and general terms but certainly not in sufficient depth to yield the perfect gift idea. We understand – or think we do – Two the young woman, and even Two the daughter. We watch her on social media and converse with her often. But as to her daily life we’re fairly clueless and our ability to predict what she might need next is rather constrained.

So there we were, wandering around a huge store where the offerings were clear but the choices not so much.

Two, if you read this, please know we tried.