So Long and Thanks for All the Fish*

Our mommy blogger shares a few thoughts on the ends of things

It's almost the end of the year, and barely a month since the end of my first year of motherhood. It's the Solstice, the end of the short days, and my second-to-last post at the Mama Drama. (A new writer will fill this spot in 2009.)

I'm pretty sure I've reached the end of using "I'm a new mom," as an excuse for anything, even though I'm still breastfeeding, which arguably not only increases my ability to forget things, but also keeps me in a periodic state of sleepiness. Thank you Oxytocin.

My boy is going to walk soon. That's an ending. And a beginning, of course.

This Christmas/Hannukah feels different. The end of the belief that gifts are important. Gifts are nice, but we're looking at them differently this year. The ones my husband and I got for each other? We have a pinky-swear pact that if we don't love them, we're returning them. It seems obvious, but we've never done that, said that. I've hung onto things he gave me because he gave them to me. We bought the gifts before we realized we were starting to feel this way. We joke still about the ridiculously huge holiday season we had our first year dating. When we were courting and money was no object.

I wonder how much further we might go. What if we gave up traditional gifts altogether? What if we made things for each other? What if we did service in our community instead?

We didn't get our boy any gifts this year. But he's hardly deprived. He gets clothes and toys all the time, it seems. I briefly considered wrapping up some toys a friend handed down to us recently, but the truth is, the boy doesn't seem much about unwrapping things at the moment. He was fine to see them come out of a paper bag on a day that wasn't Christmas or Hannukah.

Then again, he's received more than enough gifts from his grand and great grandparents to make up for it.

Next year may be different. He may be more aware of gifts by then.

Tonight, my husband asked, "How will we teach him a work ethic? To be of service?"

And then I saw this post, by a husband who is collecting 500 "mother letters" -- letters written by mothers about motherhood; which he will make into a book for his wife for Christmas. And all the money that family was going to spend on gifts? They're donating it to a village on the other side of the world.

Can our family make the leap to that kind of service? Do we need to give gifts? Will we only make rather than buy gifts for each other in the future? Will we give gifts and also give back?

I look forward to living towards the answers.

*Credit and apologies to Douglas Adams