You shouldn't have

Christmas in a Manhattan apartment can be an exercise in not appearing ungrateful.

It seems hard for anyone who hasn’t shared a one-bedroom apartment with another adult to comprehend the constant vigilance it requires to keep from getting quickly overrun with stuff.

For example, as I was Christmas shopping for John, I came across a lovely coffee table book I figured my hubby would love. It came in a large hardcover or in a smaller paperback. True the hardcover was more expensive, but the real decision came down to space. I figured he’d like the contents either way and the paperback would take up less room.

Until you’ve stood in a bookstore actually evaluating the real estate a book will consume, you may not understand the challenge of Christmas here.

<>People who love us send us gifts. This is, of course, tradition and it comes from a place of love. We simply don’t have room for much more than we already have.

We already have framed art in storage with several of our friends because we lack the space to hang it. Any new item of clothing or pair of shoes means smashing the closet’s contents to make way. We had to cast off great amounts of kitchen gear before we moved, and anything new – even the skinny little mandolin that I now adore – demands standing with cupboard doors open and playing a little mental Tetris.

I have tried to explain to people things like, “if you send me amaryllis bulbs that need to be kept cool and dark for weeks to get them to flower, I have no basement or garage where I can do that.” But even saying it just feels wrong somehow. When someone does something nice for you, how dreadful to feel compelled to explain how they went wrong.

Most middle class Americans live in more square footage than ever before. While a generation ago, Mom, Dad and three kids might have lived in a 900-square-foot house, today the trend is toward ever bigger houses even as families shrink. If anything, many people our age might suffer from not having enough furniture to fill all that space.

From that perspective, it makes sense that it wouldn’t enter someone’s mind to consider “where will they put it?” when they ship us some goodie. Especially for people who haven’t visited and seen first hand that it’s literally the living room/dining room/kitchen, one bedroom and the bathroom. That’s it. No storage outside the apartment. There’s a bike in our bedroom, on the end that’s also John’s office. Our bed is on risers so we can pack our suitcases and extra bedding under it. John keeps blank canvases under the couch. Every square inch is pretty much accounted for.

My dad has historically been a slightly tone deaf gift giver. Shopping was my stepmom’s job when I was a kid, and as I unwrapped Christmas presents, Dad would say without a trace of self-consciousness “Hand that here so I can see what we got you.” After they divorced, he was a little slow to learn that gift giving involves paying attention to what the other person might want – and not just getting them something you think they should have.

When we bought our house, that made life easy on Dad. He could shop for gifts he understood – appliances, tools, stuff you get at Sears or ABC Warehouse – and he was very generous with us.

Moving to a New York rental created new challenges, but Dad rose to the occasion. He’s still figuring out this interweb thing, but I emailed him my amazon.com wish list, John’s wish list, and supplemented it with some restaurants we’d love to go to. Dad knows how much we love food, so he called a few of the restaurants to find out what an average meal goes for, then he sent us a check with specific instructions on which restaurants we’re to spend how much at.

It’s the perfect New Yorky gift. I just need to make sure I use my gym membership so I don’t find a place to keep it.