I Miss My Brother

On this day, the day of my 100th blog post, I am thinking forward to Christmas shopping, prompted perhaps by retailers cramming it down our throats and a radio station already playing carols.

Honestly, I don't know if I can take 55 days of Andy Williams...but I digress.

My grandmother is really the only family member I enjoy shopping for any more. My mother says my grandmother is hard to buy for, but I don't think so. She's interested in her garden and the animals in the yard and in puttering around the kitchen, and she enjoys kitschy home and garden stuff. It's the other family members who are difficult to buy gifts for. Mom buys all her own Rosamund Pilcher and John Grisham books before anyone else even knows they're out. Dad doesn't fish or golf as much as he used to, and then again, he has everything already. My sister puts together wish lists of Chanel perfumes, pashmina sweaters, $40 tweezers, and cosmetic surgery, but I usually just get her a basket from The Body Shop.

The gifts I wind up giving seem generic and impersonal. I mean, I could do a $25 basket from The Body Shop for a Secret Santa operation.

Now my brother was the one who was fun to shop for. He was so much more engaged with the world and appreciated the weird, wild, and wonderful. When he experimented with Asian cooking, I special-ordered a rice steamer and some Chinese straw sandals. When he developed an interest in heirloom vegetables and seed preservation, I got him a do-it-yourself seed collection kit.

Last Christmas I found the seed kit, unopened, under the bed in what is now the guest room. My heart flinched - he didn't like it? Then I remembered that that particular Christmas was a month before he died, that he didn't live to collect any seeds, and that was why he didn't use it.

I slid it back under the bed.

This year, I want to get him this carnivorous plant terrarium. No one else in the family would think it's cool the way he would. The way I do. I've lost my ally, the other family member who thought like do, the one I could sit at the holiday table with and whisper snarky remarks to about the others.

I know the Salvation Army gets a lot of crappy toys from the dollar stores as donations. This year they're going to get a couple of carnivorous plant terrariums.