When figuring out Mother’s Day festivities, be sure to allow plenty of time for your mom to open her presents.
If your mother is anything like my mother, it will take her about 18 hours to open her gifts.
There are two kinds of people in the world. The first are those who just rip into a gift with salivatory delight. After all, it’s the thought that counts. So, the sooner you can get at what is inside the sooner you can see how the thought has been translated into a gift, the sooner you can graciously and effusively thank the giver.
The other kind of person is mothers.
They go into spasms of ecstasy over a gift’s wrapping. They caress the bow, wax poetic on the beauty of the paper and, in general, treat the package as if it were an injured fawn. They can’t bear to mar the beauty.
Eventually, they attempt to open the present without tearing the paper. Minutes drag by and become hours, days, weeks. The seasons change, onlookers grow old, retire and move to Arizona.
Here’s where the irony comes in. Sooner or later (mostly later) the paper has to be torn. There just isn’t any other way to open a present. You could look it up in a physics book.
Philosophically, also, this dawdling is wrong.
Substance is more important than appearance. The intelligent, sensitive person is able to look beyond mere appearance to the reality that lies beneath.
So it is with presents. The wrapping is appearance. The gift inside is reality. Wrapping is the sizzle. The gift is the steak.
So, you may be asking, why wrap presents at all?
Or, even more radical, why not just skip a gift and give the wrapping lover pretty wrapping paper?
Because it’s your mother, that’s why. You have to – you want to – give your mother a gift on Mother’s Day.
If it makes her happy to take forever to unwrap a package, so be it.
More Top Picks Car Washs
Take it from me, time spent with your mother on Mother’s Day is precious.
My mother is gone.
What I wouldn’t give to be able to watch my mom dawdle over package wrapping.
She could take hours.
I wouldn’t mind a bit.
Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.