I am a person who doesn’t like to shop. But I have a sister who loves to shop. And I had a birthday recently.

My sister bought me a purse. No,…my sister bought me eight purses! Do I need eight purses? No. So why did she buy eight purses? There is a very logical – and creative – explanation. This is how she explained it to me.

“I know you don’t like to shop,” she said.

“But I do like to shop,” she continued.

“So I thought, if I could put myself in your place, doing the onerous-to-you task of shopping, I could function as your own personal shopper. It was harder than I thought.”

The major problem she encountered was that she is not me. And to put oneself into the position of thinking and choosing like the person whom you are not,…well, it’s not an easy thing to do.

But she did make the extra effort and she powered through the challenge having both the love of shopping and the love of sister propelling her forward. And so my sister visited different stores in our area, perusing their selections of bags and purses, rejecting some and purchasing others. Then she laid them out to display them and invited me to choose my favorite.

First she made me a cup of tea, offered me some homemade, heart-shaped, raspberry flavored cookies, conducted me into her living room and after a short (kind of short, but also kind of mysteriously vague) explanation of what she had done, she whisked a couple of scarves off her sectional couch to reveal the eight, spanking new, hand selected, purses.

Can I just say, I was so surprised – and delighted. And what fun I had considering each of the beautiful and unique bags! It was just the girls in our family – my mom and us two sisters. So we all got to admire and give our opinions on each of the bags. What fun: exploring the zippers, hidden pockets, latches and shoulder straps, colors and designs! Thanks to my sister’s creative approach to birthday gifting, we created a memory together. And I received a beautiful purse which, by the way, will remind me of the day I had my own personal shopper.