@ossobuco,
I'm trying to remember what I ever got my mother in law for Christmas. Housecoats, sweaters, costume jewelry, which she had a lot of to start with so that was a clue; husband and I usually got the dad some books in subjects he liked.
She sent us five dollars in a c. card, even in the late eighties, and then my husband tended to get his usual pack of white sox, and I would get some odd thing, the one that stands out in memory being the giant hanging display of plastic strawberries. But they were people who toughed out the depression and, as I rolled my eyes, that was sometimes with fondness; much later, gads, maybe they were right. More on that another time, as spare doesn't have to mean...
Ah, but what am I saying.. the gift giving culture and any nuances weren't part of my husband's or his brother's lives. All those white sox and not much experience of anything else.
The dad was a good thinker; the mother was in some ways like mine, though they never met. I loved my mother, but had to do emotional leaps to love his. I got to "fond", with, over time, empathy.
Both were bright, my mother being high school valedictorian except she was so shy she refused it (that would have been 1918 or so), and my husband's mother going to and graduating from a women's college in the thirties. Both mothers pretty much stopped reading, and had, as luck would have it, a lot of rules for living.
Now I miss not only my own mother, but his. Sort of.
