Since I was old enough to have a piggy bank, each holiday season I’d ask my mother and father what they wanted for Christmas.
Their answer: “All we want are good kids.”
Of course my childhood refrain was, “You always say that, but what else do you want that I can buy for you?”
I knew gift giving would be much easier if I could purchase a drugstore perfume for my mom and a necktie for my dad and have it over with. But no, that was not good enough for my parents. Their expectation of being a good kid was code for living by the values they tried to instill in us.
Fast-forward 50-plus years and it’s clear to me that their request, while a tall order, was really the gift they most wanted, even though being a good kid became a moving target as the years went by.