Deborah Woehr

The weekend before last, my husband made a comment about how hard it was to get into the Christmas spirit this year. He wasn’t alone. It seemed that everyone I talked to couldn’t wait for the holiday to be over with.

Our spirits didn’t lift until Christmas Eve. My husband took my youngest son to the 49′ners game, while I dragged my oldest over to my mother-in-law’s to help her prepare his family’s traditional dinner of German rouladen. That evening, my mother-in-law’s neighbor invited us into his home to look at his wife’s vintage doll house. My twin nephews managed to keep their hands to themselves the entire time, but one of them couldn’t stay out of the presents when we returned to my mother-in-law’s. It’s been a long time since my boys were four, so this brought back all kinds of memories for me.

My kids have known who “Santa” is for a long time, but that didn’t dampen the spirit for my youngest, who started poking around my tree on Saturday morning. He gets his intense curiosity from me. I found myself sneaking up to the gifts when no one was looking and wiggling the big box that had my name on it. My husband told me not to bother with speculation because I wasn’t going to guess.

I had a very good idea what he had gotten me, due to the debate we got into over Macs versus PC’s. I’ve had my sights on a G5 tower for the past year, but they were too expensive for my budget. Besides, my G4 was still doing its job, albeit slowly. I didn’t expect him to get me a G5. In fact, I fully expected to have to wait until I saved enough money. To my surprise, he got me an iMac with a 20″ screen.

While my youngest was building the Lego monstrosity my mother-in-law had given him, my oldest was waiting for me to transfer all of my files from the G4 to the iMac. He was fully introduced to Macs when he took a technical drawing class last year. Before the summer was out, he asked me if he could have my old computer if I were to get a new one. He’s also had his sights on my speaker and woofer system and was hoping that it wouldn’t work with the iMac. To his disappointment, it worked just fine.

Oldest boy: Can I have your G4?
Mom: It won’t work with any of your games and programs.
Oldest boy: Can I have the monitor?
Mom: Yes, if you can get it to hook up.
Oldest boy takes a look at the plug and realizes that it won’t. “Can I have the computer?”
Mom: You won’t be able to do much with it, but sure.

Once I helped him re-install the system software, he was off and running with the thing. This was his big present, a five year-old computer that I was praying would last me until next Christmas. I came home from work this afternoon to find him in his room with his friend, blasting Linkin’ Park from the stock speakers while my husband and youngest were cursing at their video games (and loving every minute of it). It was all good.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.