It’s All About The Bow

While wrapping a present and tying a casual (imperfect) bow, I thought about a memory years ago…it’s amazing how an emotion can come back to us from a small but grand gesture!  I was dating a man, business oriented which is what jives with my personality, and as I got to know him better I found he was unafraid to show his emotions and very creative, but you’d never know this if you weren’t close to him.  Close friends and family thought we’d marry some day, and to this day I am unsure that would have happened, but we were very, very close until the day he died.  And, someday, I may tell you this story but I’m very busy today with a very special first birthday, but wanted to capture this memory while in full bloom.

So, it was one of my children’s birthday, I have three, I think it was Jeff’s, and of course Carlyle doesn’t come to my home with a wrapped gift.  He comes early to my home (we simply liked to hang around each other doing nothing and everything) with a large plastic container of wrapping paper and all the paraphernalia that goes with wrapping a grand gift.  I watched in amazement, which was his end goal here, as he wrapped and pulled out raw ribbon making a seriously beautiful bow wrapped around this understated gift!  Truly, this was a grand bow, ya’ll.

With this gesture in time I hold a few life goals close to my heart because of the memories I still have from this 30 minute moment.  We are creating memories every damn day and it’s about the prep before the event that (for me) is the most imperfectly important time.   The gift is about how much thought I put forth, not the money, and it’s all about the glorious bow, whether wrapped underneath with brown paper bags or an elegant paper, to create a very happy birthday reaction.