One More Red Box

                                 Red Box?


     Maybe you're wondering about the title of this blog; One More Red Box (or not). But if you are, here goes...

     My mother -in-law's birthday is in early December and every year two of her daughters come from out of town to visit. Several days are filled with shopping, eating, laughing and attending whatever recitals or programs the children may have going on. One year my father-in-law decided that along with his wife, his daughters should also get gifts. While he was carefully choosing just the right gift for his wife of 50+ years at the jewelry store, he also chose special gifts for his daughters.The store wraps the gifts in beautiful red boxes and when you see the box, you know just where it came from. It was a total surprise and the girls were ecstatic. Since we live in the same town and I am often around, I suppose he felt a little guilty that they were all opening these gifts and I didn't have one, I promise there were no guilt producing words or actions from me! After all, they were his daughters and he can buy them gifts whenever he wants to, right? Well the next year, I was added to the "red box" list. After that, my daughters were added, after that other granddaughters were added and now the list even includes great-grandaughters. The poor man has to begin his red-box shopping right after Christmas to buy all the gifts for the following year, as we say in the south, "Bless his heart"  ;) Though each gift is similar, one year it's a necklace, one year it's earrings, etc. they all are carefully chosen and reflect the style and personality of each recipient.

     It doesn't end there, one year, he decided to buy each one of us a pair of socks and attach them to the box. Again, each pair is chosen specifically for each recipient. How cool is that!!!

     It is so encouraging that he and my mother -in-law are so supportive of this adoption, (at one time they had even considered traveling to China with us!) but it caught me totally off guard when this past Christmas (2010) as we were all standing around googling over the boxes and arguing over whose is whose (it gets pretty nasty ;) ) I noticed that there was an extra box (if my tears hit the keyboard and the whole computer shorts out and I'm electrocuted and end up in the hospital, please forgive me, I'll finish later). That box is for our little Hannah, though she is not here yet, she is still very much a part of our lives and our hearts and we are about to bust while we wait for the day we can finally meet her and bring her home. So from now on, he has to buy "One More Red Box".

    {Just a note about lingo for people who haven't experienced adoption. We will refer to Hannah as our real daughter, because she IS our real daughter. We wouldn't say these are our real daughters and this is our adopted daughter, just like you wouldn't say  this one I had by c-section and this one I had...well, you know. The only difference is the mode of delivery.  Three of our children are "homegrown" and one was "Made in China" - in this case, "Made in China" is a good thing, a very good thing!}

TTFN
(Ta-Ta For Now!)