This is a Japanese job aid that accompanies a chunk of cloth used for wrapping gifts. I have no idea why my family didn't adopt this idea wholesale. Could be because Japan was a very different place than it is today, and nothing Japanese was considered particularly good. In fact, Made In Japan was synonymous with Built Like Crap. But in the 50's, the whole country was still something of a smoldering heap, thanks to us bombing them into rubble during WWII. Crap or not, this little genius how-to-wrap diagram could have saved my family endless heartache.
A friend of mine remarked that if she had gotten a roll of Scotch tape for Christmas, she'd have been divinely happy. "I just figured it had to be a high dollar item, since my parents wouldn't buy it." Neither would mine, and I came from a family equally WASP-y. My parents seemed to feel that doing something in the most inconvenient way possible was character building. So, no Scotch tape, no pre-tied bows, no name tags. My parents would spring for a few rolls of thick cut-rate wrapping paper and dig out the household's single pair of paper shears, and then we were all off to the races wrapping gifts.
My mother and father, their characters already built, could actually make our non-system work. They carefully calculated the exact amount of paper needed, cut out a neat rectangle, bent it around the gift, and then called for my sister or me. Our job was to hold down the wrapping paper while my parents tied it with the thin crinkly gift ribbon they always bought. During the tying part, my sister and I had to hold the ribbon in place with our thumbs, while my parents knotted it into place, usually hurtfully catching our fingers and thumbs. For gift tags, they used left-over calling cards, engraved with my mother's maiden name, or they snipped them out of index cards. By holding the paper shears open and whipping them down the length of a trailing bit of ribbon, my mother could magically create curls.
All this took adult brawn and know-how and was clearly beyond my sister's and my abilities. Nor could we make up for a lack of Scotch tape by using lots of ribbon. Gift wrap supplies were rationed out like war-time luxury goods. Once Christmas day was over, my mother carefully ironed the nicer-looking wrap for the following year, as did her mother. I like to think I've broken our family's dysfunctional cycle, because I tear off wrapping paper with abandon, although I'm known to recycle gift bags.
I've puzzled over my parents' penny-pinching ways and can't lay them at any particular door. They were both products of The Great Depression, but came from well-off families. As I've said in an earlier post, my mother was fairly sure she ate horse at a couple of dinners, but otherwise she, like my father, didn't suffer the way most of the country did.
Squeezing a nickle seemed to come naturally to all of us. One of my aunts cut the fronts off all the Christmas cards she got, glued them to a piece of red or green construction paper and sent them out as her own cards. It was not unusual to receive a card from her that you'd actually sent her to begin with. Another uncle sent as gifts, the craft items he'd made while in the loony bin. I remember two sand-cast lead dinosaurs he gave me, and three hand-knit wash cloths that weighed in at about ten pounds when wet. He also made me a doll that had such a palpably evil face that my father threw it in front of an on-coming train.
Perhaps my uncle wasn't so much nutty, as thrifty in his gift-giving. And perhaps such uber-thriftiness is also my right and just Scottish heritage.
As Hemingway says, Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?
A friend of mine remarked that if she had gotten a roll of Scotch tape for Christmas, she'd have been divinely happy. "I just figured it had to be a high dollar item, since my parents wouldn't buy it." Neither would mine, and I came from a family equally WASP-y. My parents seemed to feel that doing something in the most inconvenient way possible was character building. So, no Scotch tape, no pre-tied bows, no name tags. My parents would spring for a few rolls of thick cut-rate wrapping paper and dig out the household's single pair of paper shears, and then we were all off to the races wrapping gifts.
My mother and father, their characters already built, could actually make our non-system work. They carefully calculated the exact amount of paper needed, cut out a neat rectangle, bent it around the gift, and then called for my sister or me. Our job was to hold down the wrapping paper while my parents tied it with the thin crinkly gift ribbon they always bought. During the tying part, my sister and I had to hold the ribbon in place with our thumbs, while my parents knotted it into place, usually hurtfully catching our fingers and thumbs. For gift tags, they used left-over calling cards, engraved with my mother's maiden name, or they snipped them out of index cards. By holding the paper shears open and whipping them down the length of a trailing bit of ribbon, my mother could magically create curls.
All this took adult brawn and know-how and was clearly beyond my sister's and my abilities. Nor could we make up for a lack of Scotch tape by using lots of ribbon. Gift wrap supplies were rationed out like war-time luxury goods. Once Christmas day was over, my mother carefully ironed the nicer-looking wrap for the following year, as did her mother. I like to think I've broken our family's dysfunctional cycle, because I tear off wrapping paper with abandon, although I'm known to recycle gift bags.
I've puzzled over my parents' penny-pinching ways and can't lay them at any particular door. They were both products of The Great Depression, but came from well-off families. As I've said in an earlier post, my mother was fairly sure she ate horse at a couple of dinners, but otherwise she, like my father, didn't suffer the way most of the country did.
Squeezing a nickle seemed to come naturally to all of us. One of my aunts cut the fronts off all the Christmas cards she got, glued them to a piece of red or green construction paper and sent them out as her own cards. It was not unusual to receive a card from her that you'd actually sent her to begin with. Another uncle sent as gifts, the craft items he'd made while in the loony bin. I remember two sand-cast lead dinosaurs he gave me, and three hand-knit wash cloths that weighed in at about ten pounds when wet. He also made me a doll that had such a palpably evil face that my father threw it in front of an on-coming train.
Perhaps my uncle wasn't so much nutty, as thrifty in his gift-giving. And perhaps such uber-thriftiness is also my right and just Scottish heritage.
As Hemingway says, Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?
1 comment:
Dear Ashley,
I have tried for so long to find you! Much to share about Nora and how you have inspired her - she is writing a book on Edwin Booth, was the research historian for the Lincoln book by Doris Kerns Goodwin, and is a mother of the smartist 5 yr old boy I have ever know.
I hope you are well. I would love to hear from you - it would mean worlds to me. Mom and Dad are still alive (barely), I have a son as well - Toby - an aeronautical engineer in Denver (just married).
I pray that you will call 319-325-2702
Your Little Italian,
Roger
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