Christmas Shopping with my Mother

When we first got to Nashville, I got with my mother and we made a list of things we wanted to do together and scheduled those things on our calendars.  Today was our shopping day.  I got to her house early and we headed out to Cool Springs Galleria.

The miracle worker.

My mother is a shopper.  Even if she doesn’t buy anything, she likes to go look and “finger the merchandise”, as she calls it.  When I was in high school, once a month we would go shopping.  Much of my adult life, I have lived a far distance from her.  I’d come home for a visit and the first thing she’d want to do was go shopping.  We have even been known to take trips to Chicago or Atlanta just for the shopping.  I always enjoyed those trips, not because I enjoy shopping, but because she is such a hoot and never failed to make the trip a real experience.  Oh my gosh, can she find the stuff to buy.  It is some sort of sickness with her, however.  She just loves to shop.  Most often she will not keep the purchases.  After a few days, she’ll take them back.  I asked her one time why she bought stuff if she didn’t want or need it and her answer was that she “just loved the shopping part”—looking, touching, trying on, and apparently even the paying part.  She was mostly Christmas shopping today, so I expect she will keep most of what she got.  However, she did buy a pair of shoes and a jacket for herself.  My money is on the jacket going back.  We’ll see.  She told me today, that she had really enjoyed our day.  My dad usually goes with her, she said, and he always sets a time when he wants to meet up.  According to her, she never has enough time to really shop.  It occurred to me that that may be his method of keeping her spending under control.

We walked from one end of the mall to the other.  We stopped in William-Sonoma for a sample of chocolate peppermint bark and free apple cider.   I had my camera slung over my shoulder just in case a Kodak moment popped up along the way and an eager little sales girl from one of those kiosks in the middle of the mall ran up to mother and asked me to take her picture.  Then we were trapped and had to listen to her sales pitch.  She knew all the tricks.  She even asked if we were sisters.  I couldn’t decide if she thought my mother looked really young or if I looked really old.  Anyway, first thing I knew, she had mother by the hand and was buffing the ridges off one of her fingernails the whole while chanting “first blue, then gray, then white” so we could learn the proper way to buff.  Then she showed us the miracle.  I knew it was a miracle because she asked if I believed in miracles.  Of course, I said “yes”—then she revealed my mothers nail.  It was smooth and shiny—truly a miracle if you had seen that nail beforehand.  I wanted to buy one of those buffers right then and there, but you couldn’t get the buffer by itself.  You had to get the whole kit for $49.  Thanks, but no thanks.  I didn’t think that miracle was worth $49.

When I was about to collapse in the floor from hunger, we headed to Ruby Tuesday.  Over our soup and salad lunch, she checked her shopping list.  The only things left were gift card.  Speaking of miracles—this was a true miracle—I had the opportunity to teach my mother something.  That doesn’t happen often in anybody’s life since mothers tend to know it all.  But today I got a turn.  She was wondering how to get the gift cards and I suggested Kroger.  She was shocked.  So we went to Kroger and gathered around the stand with the gift cards from almost every business establishment known to man.  She was amazed.  She grabbed what she needed.  There was one tense moment at the check-out when she couldn’t find her credit card, but that quickly passed when she finally looked in her wallet.

I had to dash from her house to meet my friends for dinner, but I’ll have to save that story for tomorrow.  It deserves more time and energy than I have tonight.