Practical gifts

A comment I often hear from my friends is ” What should I buy my mom/dad/parents for (fill in occasion here)?”.  This makes sense to me, because while you want to get your folks something nice, you don’t want it to be useless.  A friend of mine will get together with her sisters and buy her dad an “experience”, such as race car driving lessons or a birthday package with the local farm team (baseball) where he can throw out a ceremonial first pitch.  These are great ideas for several reasons – it appeals to his interests and recalls childhood fantasies of wanting to be a sports figure, it creates a family day situation, and the cost is split among many.

I tend to lean towards practical gifts for my mom.  One year during autumn, I was doing some catalog browsing and found some winter boots, which made me think of the sad state of my mom’s current boots.  I decided I would her her an early Christmas gift of new boots, because I know that she would never think to replace them on her own. 

So today, Memorial Day, I went into the garage to check out my bike, the tires, grease the chains, and I looked at my mom’s bike, dusty, icky and unused.  I decided to give Mom an early birthday gift.  I called the local bike shop, which was open, and he said to bring it in.  I inflated the tires and rode it across town and left it with him and walked home.   He is going to take her 25 year old bike and give it new pedals, water bottle holder, and replace anything worn.  So Happy Birthday Mom, you’ll have your bike all ready for summer!