EDITORIAL

An omission Ollie won’t let us forget

Posted 12/30/21

Ollie’s beseeching eyes didn’t leave us Christmas morning.

While our kids now have kids of their own and have long left the house, we keep up the ritual of stockings.

We don’t …

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EDITORIAL

An omission Ollie won’t let us forget

Posted

Ollie’s beseeching eyes didn’t leave us Christmas morning.

While our kids now have kids of their own and have long left the house, we keep up the ritual of stockings.

We don’t wait until late Christmas Eve to fill them, nor do they hang in front of the fireplace that now is closed off. A couch sits there. I found a nail in the mantle to hang Carol’s stocking. Carol, who bought me a beacon stocking as an early Christmas gift had mine draped across the back of a chair.

We’ve both discovered Ocean State Job Lot is Santa’s warehouse. It’s filled with practical gifts from raspberry jam to kitchen gadgets, the obscure such as the pumice tool to smooth foot calluses and electronic gismos like the remote controlled on and off extension cord. It’s just what you need to turn off the lights without getting out of bed or turning on the outdoor Christmas display.

Stocking gifts are wrapped in tissue paper for rapid unwrapping. And in some cases, Job Lot price tags aren’t removed. Part of the joy of a stocking gift is knowing your spouse found a great deal at Santa’s warehouse.

We sat together on the couch – Christmas music playing – in a bed of balled up tissue paper as we reached for the toe of our stockings.

Ollie’s eyes didn’t leave us.

The message was clear, had we forgotten him?

Where was his stocking?

We’ve always had pet stockings. Binky, our combination Doberman and Greyhound, loved his tennis balls and the rawhide bones that he quickly sniffed out from “his” stocking. We all loved it when he’d tear off the wrapping paper and prance about the living room in a display of sheer joy before lying down to seriously chew up the prize.

Squeaky toys were demolished in minutes. Binky’s gusto was a trademark of many Christmases Ollie isn’t as flamboyant, but loves gifts, especially the rubber ball filled with peanut butter. He wouldn’t leave it until the contents were licked clean, which meant hours of slobbering concentration.

But we didn’t have an Ollie stocking this year.

Carol reasoned his teeth – those that he has – aren’t that great and giving him rawhide treats could be a mistake. He’s never gone for squeaky toys and stuffed animals, so they didn’t offer alternatives.

A bag of treats would have worked, but then he would have gulped them down in a sitting and we’d be faced with the barf puddle the morning after if not sooner.

I tried to explain this to Ollie. But I knew even if he understood what was happening it wasn’t going tochange things.

His disappointment was palpable.

“Merry Christmas,” I said tossing him a balled up wad of tissue paper, an open invitation to at least tear something apart. He let it sail past him with barely a glimpse.

Carol reached for a bag of treats and handed him one.

Ollie’s no fool. He wasn’t going to turn down a treat.

He grudgingly accepted it.

We didn’t feel any better.

He wasn’t even interested in any of our Job Lot loot. After all, it was ours not his.

We were exceptionally generous when it came to sharing our Christmas breakfast.

I’m sure he noticed, yet he hasn’t let us forget. Those beseeching eyes watch every bite we take at dinner, and the morsels he gets are noticeably larger since Christmas. Can it assuage our stocking omission?

Probably not, but for the moment, Ollie has discovered the oxymoron of the non-gift that keeps on giving whether he knows it or not.

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