Living in our present state of social distance may not be the best time to be with our loved ones, but this weekend past my special needs daughter asked me to take her to do our annual Christmas shopping. While bearing in mind to follow all the safety precautions set by our perspective cities, I carefully mapped out our “girls day.”

As usual my daughter wrote out her Christmas shopping list of gifts she wanted to buy for others and her list of Christmas gifts she wanted for herself. My original plan to visit an outdoor mall had to be changed because it rained that day like nobodies business. I picked her up from her home, gave her some of her own spending money and told her that our new plan was to visit an indoor mall. Because I was changing up our plans, I felt I had to be much more specific about our plans. In some ways it was actually easier since some of our favorite stores has gone out of business since Covid 19.

I made an intentional effort to make sure to visit a limited amount of stores. Our first stop was a trinket variety store where she could hopefully find a few pairs of earrings she liked. Next stop was Dunkin’ Donuts to get her favorite iced coffee and to pick up 4 gift cards from her list.

Our next stop was Bath and Bodyworks where she gets her favorite shower gels, lotions and body sprays. We stopped for a quick lunch break then continued our shopping to complete her lists.

Our final stop was Target. In Target she wanted to just buy some of her usual items like bath soap, Crystal Light on the go shake packs that she likes to drink at home and batteries for her TV remote.

For me the best part of our day was the time we spent traveling in the car. I played some of her favorite songs by artist like Charlie Wilson, Kirk Franklin and her favorite Christmas request was for me to play Mariah Carey’s version of “All I Want for Christmas.” All of a sudden she reminded me how just last Christmas we were practicing the lyrics to the song for her upcoming show at her workshop. This took me back to the memory of our Christmas dinner when we sang together for our family and a few friends that spent the first day of Kwanza with us having dinner. We continued to sing song after song all the way to the mall and back.

On the way to take my daughter back home the most touching part of our day together was when she said to me “This was my best day, I’m so happy to get out of the house. I got everything I wanted today.” Yes she did! And I got what I wanted - to spend the day with her.