I usually don’t like Christmas shopping very much, and really don’t like the people I meet while Christmas shopping very much at all either. The whole task of buying stuff has, in the past, made me very cranky. But today? It was as though some kind of Love fairy had sprinkled magic dust all across Richmond.
In Kroger’s, the grocery store, I stood in line, my arms way full of stuff (I always think I don’t need a cart, and then, oh guess what, I do.) Just as my arms were starting to go numb, and I was starting to wish dire things on the slow clerk, the slow customers, and the human race in general, the very eldery woman in front of me in line turned, gave me a smile that resembled — a lot — that of Mrs. Claus, and said, “Dearie, would you like my cart?” I kind of mumbled something like: Um? Really? “Oh, I don’t need it,” she said. “And you do!” And just like that, her cart was magically empty, and just as magically, I could put my stuff in it, and I swear right then I was next in line and before I knew it out the door and into my car and on my way to the next stop.
Which was Big Lots — oh I do love Big Lots — and there, as I was wandering the aisles looking for a Really Big Gift Bag, a woman in Carhaart overalls grabbed my arm and said, “Look!” Um, okay, I said. Where? “There! Lookit that! Ain’t that the funniest thing!?” I looked where she was pointing, and there in the middle of an aisle, sat a small boy on the floor, with two battery-operated toys in front of him, both toys singing, almost in harmony, “We Wish you a Merry Christmas!” And it was, indeed, the funniest thing. The Carhaart woman and I just grinned at each other.
And then I was in another store, buying another thing, something recommended by my brother-in-law as a Really Good Gift. The woman behind the counter was someone I knew from working in the greenhouse years and years ago. We share the same name, a low tolerance for fools, and an appreciation of the thing I was buying, the Really Good Gift. She admired my choice. “Mm, hmmmmmmmmmm,” she said. And then she added a comment I cannot repeat here lest I give away what the Really Good Gift might be. Suffice it to say, she Really Approved. Then, she rang up my purchase, came around the counter to hand it to me, and we exchanged a big hug.
I had to restrain myself then from going to the pet store after this, because I had a feeling that Santa himself would appear, bearing six tiny puppies I could not resist. So I went on home and wrapped all my gifts. And now? I’m thinking just this: this year, I really love Christmas.