DATE: Thursday, May 1, 1997                 TAG: 9704300524

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Military 

SOURCE: Jacey Eckhart

                                            LENGTH:   69 lines

BIRTHDAY PLANS SEEM TO BE EASILY LOST AT SEA

I settled Chickenpox Boy in front of the TV with a thermos of juice and a videotape so fresh you could still smell the shrink-wrap. Hoisting a stack of mail-order catalogs, I staggered off to the kitchen, determined to order a birthday gift before Quasimodo swung down from the tower. If I didn't get a present ordered by then, I knew, my 3-year-old's requests for juice and calamine lotion would kick in again and I'd never get it done.

This afternoon I had the unenviable task of selecting a birthday gift for a stranger. I should have taken care of this weeks before, chickenpox or no chickenpox. But I'd been procrastinating: I hate buying gifts for people I don't know, whose tastes I can't predict.

Buying a gift implies that you've figured out something about a person, that you have noticed something he needs, have identified a little luxury he would enjoy. If you don't know a person well, you're forced to fake it - thus the entire picture-frame industry.

My biggest problem with buying this particular gift was that the person in question was a stranger I knew well, a best friend of 10 or 11 years. I'd been married to him for almost a decade.

But after five months of his deployment to the Mediterranean, my husband was persona incognita. I simply didn't know him well enough to buy him a meaningful gift.

OK. So I might be exaggerating a little: I did know his sizes and I knew his favorite colors. I guess I could have bought him a shirt, except that he's long maintained that clothes only count as presents if the recipient is female. I didn't know what CDs he had bought for himself, and besides, I wasn't sure what kind of music he listened to any more. He had no time to read, and I couldn't send him gadgets from Williams-Sonoma - it would just remind him that he didn't have a pot to cook in.

So, please, tell me: What do you buy for the man who has nothing and nowhere to put it?

I knew better than to rely on the ship to celebrate the day. Once I sent a package of balloons and streamers to Brad's roommate and asked him to decorate their room in honor of his birthday. ``I got a bunch of stuff from your wife,'' the roommate told him. ``Do you want me to put it up?''

``Nah,'' Brad said. ``You can skip it.''

He did.

I went back to my catalogs, searching diligently for that one perfect, unbreakable gift that would tell Brad how much he was cherished and needed at home. From the vicinity of the couch, Pox Boy let loose a fine whine. ``More juice!'' Too bad the post office couldn't accept live packages bearing infectious diseases.

My brother told me once that a holiday celebrated on the ship is just another day. The thought of Brad celebrating ``just another day'' alone on the ship made me crazy. The fact that this was his third birthday in a row away from home made me crazier still.

I flipped past pages of wrinkle-resistant chinos, traveler's fanny packs and engravable brass luggage tags, then realized I wouldn't find what Brad really wanted between the covers of L.L. Bean.

The only gift that Brad really craved was a trip home. For one day he'd like to stand in his own backyard with a dark beer in his hand and turn a couple of fillets on the grill. He'd like to eat coconut cake and listen to his kids sing birthday songs. He'd like to go to sleep in a bed that doesn't smell like lube oil.

I pushed the catalogs into a pile and earmarked them for the landfill. If we started now, Pox Boy and I could make some of Brad's favorite too-spicy Chex mix this afternoon. We could find some of those little coconut cakes that wouldn't get stale even if the package were rerouted to Zimbabwe.

And somewhere in that box we would find room to send him enough love to make his birthday seem like more that just another day.

The big party is just around the corner.

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