The Stack Pack

Stack Packs for my Writing Group

Cash at 5 in his great-grandfather's football sweater

“My grandmother invented the Stack Pack,” five-year-old Cash boasted vehemently to his six-year-old sister with the pride reserved for a Nobel prize winner recently recognized for discovering a cure for a deadly disease.

The Stack Pack—gifts assembled one atop another—minimum three—then wrapped with gaily decorated paper, anchored together with hidden tape between each and tied with a colorful bow did not originate with me, but I have employed the technique (method? artistry?) for decades—years before Cash was born sixteen years ago.

Not only at Christmas time but birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, housewarmings, messy divorces—any worthy occasion. Sometimes with a theme. Sometimes no theme, just a random assortment of presents. Sometimes expensive. Sometimes very inexpensive.

Everybody will receive a book in their Stack Pack.

For my special Santa—a colorful geometrically designed lumbar pillow atop two new European pillows atop an invites-your-to-lie-down, hand-stitched velvet quilt in a manly charcoal color—may turn out to be one of the largest Stack Packs ever!

As First Flight High School’s quarterback, Cash’s stack pack will be sports related this year.

I’m thinking an athletic photograph of my father at the same age.

I’ve already given him a photograph of his uncle in his high school football uniform. It hangs in his room today.

Each year about this time, I watch the Cash video asserting my claim to fame as the inventor of the Stack Pack. It fills me and my home, 215, with the holiday spirit.

An aside, The New York Times, recently featured an article about naming your house, saying:

Americans are giving their houses names, and they’re not just grand homes on serious acreage — or listings on Airbnb or Vrbo — but rather normal, everyday abodes in the suburbs, cities or countryside. 

215, my house number, has been my home’s name since the moment I moved in eight years ago when Cash had just turned seven. I heartily recommend naming you house!

I will soon begin to place Stack Packs for my family in my living room at 215—under and around the base of the eight-foot fiddle-leaf-fig turned Christmas tree for the season.

This year, the inexpensive gifts may be the favorites. I have tested and love both the  ten-dollar Scoop & Spread Tool which is perfect for getting the very last bit of crunchy peanut butter  out of the jar and the eleven-dollar Boar’s Hair Detailing Brush. With it, I have dusted the top of all my baseboards and various nooks and crannies eagerly! Who gets which one of these still to be decided . . .

 I’m doing the Stack Packs differently this year—not with the idea of dismantling my house or downsizing or removing clutter. This holiday season, at least one gift in my upcoming Stack Pack distribution will be a recycled one for some family members of the younger generation I know or think they’d love.

The recycling will come from the various departments of 215—jewelry, library, accessories, kitchen, and women’s clothing.

Careful thought is underway as to what for whom.

I didn’t invent the Stack Pack; however, it’s definitely one of my strong suits.

Just ask Cash.

Merry Christmas y'all!

Cash's Great-grandfather in his Colorado School of Mines Football sweater, 1925