It is one of the duties of every dad to teach their sons how to shop for their mothers for special occasions. Someday, they will be taking time to shop for their wives. It will not due to have an uninformed son blame his father for showing up on such occasions with gifts of hardware or household items as many urban legends go about men. No, it requires patient instruction and modeling on the part of every father. This is why I took our oldest son, who was about 14 at the time, with me shopping for a Valentines gift for his mother.
I have always tried to include variety and creativity in my gift shopping for my wife. Over the years I had learned that a steady supply of items from Bath and Body Works was not satisfactory. Gifts cards were considered impersonal and jewelry was not always a choice due to finances since buying cheap jewelry proved to communicate an opposite message. The usual candies and flowers are considered “everyday items” and not for “special occasions.” So, as you can see, the whole shopping mission for special occasions could prove challenging.
This particular year I decided to look for some pretty negligee items, which I had not purchased for my wife in some time. We were home schooling our oldest son. So, for an opportunity to take a break, I asked if he wanted to come along.
“Hey, I’m going Valentines Day shopping for your mom. You want to come and help me pick something out for her?”
Without thinking about it, my son, seeing an opportunity to get away from school work, jumped at the chance. “Sure!”
We arrived at our local mall and I headed to a couple of stores to compare prices and items. It was then that my son began to grow suspicious.
“What are you looking for, dad?” my intuitive and inquisitive Middle School son asked me.
“Oh, I don’t rightly know yet”, I avoided. In truth, I was not really sure just what I was looking for at the time. I just had a general sense of shopping direction.
Finally, we came a cross a wonderful sale of items at Macy’s in the mall. None of the other stores were even close in price and since Macy’s is always considered a high-end store, I figured I could not go wrong. I immediately dove into the women’s personal wear.
My son stopped in the store aisle at the edge of this particular shopping section and stared at me wide-eyed.
“Dad! What are you doing?!” he cautiously asked. Alarmed to see his own father boldly going where no Middle School boy dared to tread. “I’m not going in there!” he loudly whispered.
“Oh, come on. You’re shopping for you’re mother for Pete’s sake. No one’s going to think you’re some kind of weirdo. Besides, you’re with your father and it’s a Valentines Day sale so everyone’s going to naturally assume we are shopping for my wife and your mother. Now, come on,” I goaded him but relished in his unsettled nervousness.
I looked around. The store was practically empty since it was just before noon on a week day. Besides a couple of checkers, there were only one or two other ladies at the other end of the store. One of the checkers was an older, grandmotherly looking lady who was seemed to be watching us with some amusement. I smiled and nodded her way. She smiled back at me.
I started looking and sorting through a few frilly night gowns and picked out a couple. I looked over at my son who was still standing nervously in the aisle looking away in the opposite direction. I had the distinct feeling he wanted to disown me at that moment.
“Hey,” I called over to him. “I need your help. Come hold a couple of these for me.”
He looked horrified. “What!?!” he protested. “No!”
“Aw, come on!” I countered. “I need you to help me. This is why I invited you to come along…so you could help me.”
“Dad,” he objected, “if I had known that this was what you were going to be shopping for I would have stayed home to do school work!”
“What!? And miss an opportunity to help me do something special for your mom for Valentines Day?” This was turning out to be more fun than I had expected. He really was afraid of see-through garments! Of course, I knew this and would have been just as horrified at his age. Passing the bra or panty section of the local K-Mart store was enough to turn me red then.
“Well, the sooner you help me the sooner we can get out of here and get home,” I offered. “Now, get over here and hold these. And don’t let them drag on the floor.”
Obediently, my son wound his way through garment racks and scantily dressed mannequins until he reached me. I held out the night gowns I had picked out to him. He gingerly took them as if they were breakable items. Then he quickly glanced around the store. I don’t know who he was afraid of seeing. It was not like as if any of his friends would be venturing into this department. That is, of course, unless they had fathers like me. Then it was pretty much ‘anything goes.’
I moved on to another rack but my son stood rooted to the spot I left him.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Follow me.”
He shuffled over behind me and followed, gently holding the garments at arms length in front of him.
“Don’t let those touch the floor,” I said loudly enough for the checkers to hear. I looked at him. He smiled at me because he suddenly got that I was having fun at his expense.
“I can’t believe you’d drag me away from my schoolwork to shop for ladies items with you,” he protested. “This is just wrong.”
“Hey,” I bantered back to him. “I didn’t twist your arm and make you come. You volunteered on your own. It’s not my fault that you didn’t ask what we going to shopping for.”
Canadian Geese Goslings, June 2008 ©Weatherstone/Ron Almberg, Jr. (2010)
As we wandered in and around the clothes racks, I came upon a table with a variety of ladies lacy underwear. I suddenly arrived at a fun idea. I picked out several, one at a time, and handed them to my son who took them with his other hand. Now he was draped with ladies intimate apparel. Nightgowns held up on hangers in one hand. Panties gripped in the other hand. A face of growing dismay glowing red in between.
“You’re doing a great job!” I offered in encouragement. “I think we have what we need.” There was a look of relief that came across my son’s face.
We approached the check-out counter. “I am going to buy these,” I said, pointing to the panties. “Not those,” I indicated by pointing to the nightgowns. The kindly elderly woman nodded and smiled.
But my son objected, “What?! Why did I carry those around?” he asked.
“Well, because I liked them at first. Plus, it was fun watching you carry them around.”
The grandmotherly checker snickered.
My son was old enough by now to be on to me and he smiled a sort of wry smile knowing that he had been caught up in one of his dad’s games. “Oh, I get it,” he replied. “You better not tell anyone about this – ever!”
“Sure,” I offered. “Fat chance of that,‘ I thought to myself. “This experience is going to have some fun mileage on it.”
Later, we bought a cute little flowery box, rolled and tucked the pretty underthings for his mom into the box. Then we went to a flower shop and asked the florist to deliver the flowers with the box to my wife where she worked – at a local elementary school. Later, I learned that she received the flowers and special box at her lunch break and to the delight of fellow-teachers in the teachers lounge opened the box with its contents for all to see.
“And that,” my dearest son, “is how you shop for the woman you love and show her how much you love her.”
©Weatherstone/Ron Almberg, Jr. (2010)
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