Somehow or other, the Hooberry caught a bird over the weekend. I know he caught a bird because he laid its headless body at the doorstep and danced around and around it to show me what he had done. Our mighty hunter, showing his love and devotion to us by giving us the best meat on his kill. I haven’t been so simultaneously grossed out and in love since the time infant-Thor pooped into the palm of my hand after days of constipation.
I get dry heaves thinking about either.
But, Hoo’s gift made me think about all those love languages again. I like to think I am not a Gifts person because it seems so materialistic and twee to be a Gifts person. I want to be something cool and selfless like an Acts of Service person. Alas.
Whenever I go somewhere, be it Target or Del Taco, my first thought is, “What can I get [insert name]?” Not because I think [insert name] needs anything, but just because I love him/her/it and want him/her/it to know I am thinking of them. Usually, that person is Thor, and he’s easy. I can buy him a stick of gum and he feels pleased.
I really have to fight the urge–and I mean really fight the urge, you have no idea how difficult this is for me–not to just buy random things for other people all the time. I feel a swell of fondness, and my answering nature is to buy something. Cake pops at Starbucks, Carmelo bars at the gas station, post-it notes at the grocery store, $1 bin items at Target, rawhide bones.
You’d only have to know my husband a day to understand why my GiftsGiftsGifts personality could get wearing. So, I quit trying to buy him presents, and just limit myself to grabbing him a Milky Way dark chocolate bar now and then, instead.
But I get it honestly. My mother brings random, sometimes useless gifts home for my family all the time. My grandmother did, too. I don’t know how many little crystal boxes I ended up with because my grandmother saw one for 25 cents and decided I needed it. When it wasn’t things, it was food. Krystal burgers, to be exact. It is one of my happiest memories, remembering the look that would fall across her face watching me eat a Krystal burger. I think I ate them more to see her look happy, than because I liked them. (I don’t like them. I eat them only out of nostalgia now, and they never taste as good as they did–and they were barely edible then.)
My mother watches Thor that way. I suppose I do, too.
He told me, last night, “I love you too much, Mama. I just think you are perfect, and nothing could make you better, and I want to hug you so hard because I love you, too much.” I’m thinking my boy is a Words of Affirmation type.
It’s cute that I ended up with a Gifts dog. At least someone in my family will understand my language! I just wish he’d learn to shop.
The Outside Lane 