Pleeease, tell me what I got for Christmas.

I want to know what my wife got me for Christmas. I ask her for hints, but she shrugs me off as if I asked her something preposterous. I search throughout the house for a package with my name on it––under the bed, in the spare room, in the basement, in the cabinet above the refrigerator. Over and over I wonder, "Now where would she figure I'd never find it?" I dig through the zillion shoes in her closet. I grope behind the shelves of books. I beam the flashlight across the rafters in the attic. And if I find a treasure, I will consider carefully its shape; I will shake it, hold it up to the light to see if I can decipher any printing through the wrapping paper and I will ask myself, "What would Sherlock Holmes do?" My wife thinks I'm silly, but sometimes, I swear, she has Scrooge-like tendencies.

It's the fun of it, I suppose. It's the fun of a surprise. Even after twenty-somethng years of marriage, neither can I predict what my wife will get me, nor can my wife be totally certain that it will be the next best thing since Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.  That's the creativity of it.

I think about this because maybe during the rest of the year, we can learn something from the holidays, learn to enjoy the gift of a great idea, the surprise and the delight of it. We can do our research, resort to all the predicting of consumer behavior that we have at our disposal, but we can also appreciate that the circumstances of the moment can never be entirely predicted.

I read this poem the other night by Wislawa Szymborska. It's called, "A Contribution To Statistics."

Out of a hundred people

Those who always know better

––fifty-two,

doubting every step

––nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand

if it doesn't take too long

––four, well, maybe five,

able to admire without envy

––eighteen,

living in constant fear

of someone or something

––seventy-seven

capable of happiness

––twenty-something tops,

harmless singly,

savage in crowds

––half at least,

cruel

when forced by circumstances

––better not to know

even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact

––just a couple more

than wise before it,

taking only things from life

––forty

(I wish I were wrong),

hunched in pain,

no flashlight in the dark

––eighty-three

sooner or later,

worthy of compassion

––ninety-nine,

mortal

––a hundred out of a hundred.

Thus far this figure still remains unchanged.

Fine. Then here's to more unpredictable little presents in the new year.