I typically try to avoid getting entangled in the craziness of holiday shopping. I get what I need before Thanksgiving and pray I need nothing more (besides groceries that is) after that. I avoid areas within 5 miles of malls or major shopping hubs during this time like I would avoid parking my car downtown in a certain city on devil’s night. However this year’s lack of planning found me at the last minute in need of gift tags and bags for cookies I had baked for my daughter’s teachers.

With all the courage I could muster I took a ten-minute meditation break, counted to one hundred (at least three times) with a few extra “breathe in…..breathe outs” grabbed my daughter’s hand and said “come on girl, this might get ugly but we can do it”

Oh boy, 6:00pm on a Thursday evening one and a half weeks before Christmas we were in our car driving to the epicenter of all things holiday craft bliss…a store right next to Toys R Us in the shopping center next to the mall. I would have preferred an anvil be dropped on my head but cookies needed to be gift-wrapped properly and I had no choice.

We forged our way through rush hour traffic with great patience (well really it was me who had patience, she had her iPod) and focus; tags and bags, tags and bags, tags and bags, we’ll get in and out in no time…tags and bags.

I was in robot mode.

We made it to the store in one piece without any holiday shopping near misses or disasters of any kind…still focused.

Tags and bags, we were there for just tags and bags. I was still in robot mode.

We walked in the store to an amazing site.  Almost all the shelves were empty apparently due to a 75% off sale (or everything’s practically free as my daughter put it) they were having.  Yes, everything holiday-ish was on clearance.

I barely allowed myself to get distracted by the unbelievable savings because I was there for tags and bags and that’s it.  I had to stay focused.  But as I was getting ready to mentally congratulate myself for being so disciplined my daughter asked; “mom, can we buy some new ornaments for our tree?”

Whoa, zippity doo dah, needle scratch…WHAT?

Why I didn’t even pause for a second before replying…in “robot mode” “no honey, we really don’t need more ornaments, let’s try and stay focused on what we really need”.

I don’t think she heard a word I said.  Serves me right I suppose for not even pausing before I shot down her request.  She continued without missing a beat in a voice that sounded more like a 6 year-old; “and with this sale they are practically free, why this one here is only $1.75 and just look at how beautiful it is, we need new ornaments this year I think”.

I quickly came to a halt, shoulders slumped and with eyes closed I looked up as if to find a safety net hanging on the ceiling.

I am now no longer in robot mode.

And in that very moment I asked myself (silently of course because I didn’t want to let on that I was reconsidering my initial response) “why not?” “Why not let her purchase some new ornaments this year”?  It’s not like I was going to go broke for crying out loud.  Honestly I couldn’t think of one good reason why I needed to say “no”. I suppose I just did though because I was in robot mode.

At that point I really wasn’t pondering if I needed to change a “no” to a “yes” but rather why I said no without much thought in the first place.

Was it just the holiday shopping that put me in robot mode or was that a tendency that plagued my everyday life?  I wonder how many times I threw out an automatic “no” without pause when a “yes” would have been a better choice.

I wondered just how often I spent my life in robot mode. Wouldn’t it be great to just say yes?  Of course it would.

*Yes*

With eyes wide open now and great excitement I turned to my daughter and said enthusiastically with a non-robotic smile, “yes, let’s purchase some new ornaments, I can’t see why we wouldn’t want to so pick out your favorites and throw in a few fun ones for me too”.

Without second-guessing the decision, I watched as she gleefully filled not one, but two baskets with super kooky ornaments.  Okay I have to admit I stuffed just as many ornaments into those baskets as she did.

*Yes*

Let me tell you what that “yes” really meant.  It didn’t just mean my daughter got the green light to load up on some new ornaments; it was liberating to just say yes to a simple pleasure.  We giggled and laughed for almost an hour as we sifted through fat penguins with sequent skirts, martians with glitter capes, monsters with third eyes and sassy pugs with red pants.

And the whole time we stood in line waiting to pay my girl kept laughing and repeating “Oh my, mom…we’ve never filled two baskets here before, we went crazy”.  Yes it was funny and we just kept laughing, which caused everyone else in line to laugh with us.  It was kind of like a party without the wine.

When we got home we carefully placed every ornament on the tree, recapping the shopping excursion and laughing at every single ornament again as we hung them carefully on each branch.

I could easily stop now and say that the best part of saying “yes” was at the end of the night when we were siting on the couch admiring our new holiday adornments she said, “mom, this is the best Christmas tree we’ve ever had!” but the best of that “yes” lasted throughout the holiday season.  Almost every day she admires these funny sparkly little creatures that hang out in her Christmas tree and she smiles. Sometimes she laughs and says, “I just love these little guys; I love our tree”.

And every time I look over and see her smiling at her tree I am reminded that it’s too easy to get caught up in “robot mode” and that’s not how life should be lived.  “Yes” is an invitation to the universe to deliver an unexpected surprise, for me this particular “yes” delivered the unexpected surprise of my daughter’s joy.

*yes*

I am,
The Urban Mountaineer