The situation: on July 2nd, Pamela, her Parents, and I fly to Vancouver. They will stay for three weeks, and I will remain there for six. That means that Pamela and I will be separated for (a terrible!) three weeks. And I'm basicly going to miss her Birthday: it's on the 21st... the day that she flies back to Germany. Rather than take her gift to Canada, lug it around with us, then give it to her to unwrap... and have her carry it all the way back here... I'm going to leave the gift in Germany for her to open on her return.
SO... what did I get her?
Last Christmas, I got her a very nice flower vase. At least I thought it would be picture perfect for some flowers. She, and her family, insisted that it was a Spanish Wine Decanter and refused to fill it with flowers. So this time I've gone around shopping centers and antique stores, looking for something that's a Certified Vase. I ended up finding a cut-glass foot-high vase in a Köln antique store... for wooden furniture. It's probably from the 1930s to 1960s. It's not extra special, but I liked the look of it much more than any of the modern things I'd seen. (And liked the price more than any of the fine painted antiques I'd seen... for 300 Euros.)
I had already decided how I wanted to pack and present the vase; floating in a container of 500 of Pamela's favourite bon-bons. They have their own story though: I get a few for free after every meal in the "cantine" in Lüneburg. (What is this "Cantine" which I mention? The story is like this: No food is prepared at the theater. There is a restaurant with an agreement though; We can order in the morning, and then they will bring the Daily Dish to the theater at around noon. And everyone in the theater gets a 20% discount off the food. But for those who don't know in the morning what they want to eat, they can go directly to the restaurant and get the same discount, eating there. -And this restaurant is about 200 steps from my front door. SO... I eat there a couple times a week. -And get these bonbons... which taste of coffee, which I HATE, but Pamela LOVES.)
The candies are not available in regular stores though; only in 1 kg bags from a retail restaurant provider. I had to ask the restaurant management to get a whole bag for me the next time they went shopping. And they did! These candies are soothing for Pamela when she's under stress, especially when she's having a hard day at work. So I thought it would be a very useful thing for her to have, hard at work, and separated from me for three weeks.
Anyhow, That's two gifts now: Glass Vase, and 500 coffee-candies. I think it was on my lengthy train ride back to Lüneburg that I started thinking about a poem as well. Before I had it finished, I had a stroke of genius. Have you ever seen (or been) a child collecting stickers, cards, figures or pogs from bags of chips, candies, or cereal? "Collect the whole SET!" I imagine that everyone is familiar with the idea. Well, what if I did that with my poem? What if I cut it into... say, 100 little pieces, of three or four words each? And wrapped each of those pieces up inside a wrapper with a candy? It's a bit like a Love Poetry Advent Calendar, but with nothing to do about Christmas. Best of all, the more Hard and Stressful Pamela's day was, the more new words of love she'll have from me at the end of it.
I must have spent a full two days perfecting the poem, writing it on slips of paper, unwrapping 100 candies, and then wrapping them back up, WITH a slip of paper, Making the Lay-Out Board which Pamela will glue the strips of paper to as they appear, making SUCH a cute card, explaining my concept, and then wrapping it all up (100 candies in the vase, and the vase surrounded by 400 other candies without writing inside them,) to look perfect. I'm going to take a picture of it now, in which you can see -The wrapped vase with 500 bonbons. -The Layout Sheet. -The Ceremonial Glue-Stick for attaching the paper-slips. -A few scattered bon-bons so you can better imagine them.
Isn't it lovely?Oh Right! Would you like to know what the finished poem is? I can make a link to that: The Birthday Poem.