Open Thread: What's the Best Gift You've Ever Given?
What makes a good gift, anyway?
(I forget where that sticker came from, or what it means.)
It’s the time of the season for … gift guides.
I enjoy a gift guide just as much as the next shopper. (I even considered assembling a TAoN gift guide, though figuring out what that would be quickly stumped me.)
But I also find them exhausting. So much cool stuff! Or at least it looks pretty cool right now. Who knows how a potential recipient — including myself: let’s be honest, gift guides function as general shopping guides; we can all think of a rationale to “gift” ourselves — will feel about that shiny object in a month, a year, a decade?
This got me thinking about gifts I’ve given, and how they went over. Trust me, I’ve given some clunkers. But I want to say something about one that I was pleased with.
Like most couples, I assume, E and I have certain phrases that have specific meaning only to us. I could never really explain to anyone else why one of us will occasionally say “Is that you, mole man?” or “Ham on a roll!” or (with a Russian accent) “Is garbage.” Let’s just say that these words connote memories of our years together, from adventures shared to simple jokes. It’s like a code language.
So three or four years ago, I grabbed one of several notebooks that I have previously acquired and utterly failed to use, and wrote down as many of these phrases as I could remember.
I presented this to E — and then we sat and remembered (and added) more of them. Even now, years later, occasionally one of us will remember another one: “Is that in the notebook?” We keep adding. Lately a topic is whether more recent phrases we’ve latched onto might qualify: “Should that be in the notebook?” Only we understand what it takes to make the cut — and it’s fun when something does. In a way, it’s a gift that really does keep on giving. (If someone finds this notebook after we’re gone, it will read like pure nonsense.)
Again, no shade to gift guides, but everything about this gift that worked could not come from a guide! And again: I’m not a great gift-giver — that’s why this is one that stands out.
So what about you? What’s a gift you’re pleased to have given? (Or received?)
P.S. Earlier posts here and here on “mindful materialism” may be of interest.
A friend and I once discovered that as children in the '70s we'd both owned the Comanche Pass play set (from Marx Toys), which involved a band of Comanche warriors dropping a plastic boulder onto a settlers' wagon train. (Fun!) He once said to me, jokingly but wistfully — and he's not a particularly wistful person — that "I'd like to hold that boulder in my hand once more before I die." So every now and then, for the next several years, I'd do an eBay search for that damn boulder. It was an elusive quest… but at last, the very boulder appeared and I snapped it up. I then hired a maker (via Etsy) who customizes velvet bags (mostly for bottles of cognac, I imagine) to create a small bag embroidered with the word BOULDER; I put the boulder. in the bag before giving it to my friend. Totally ridiculous, but I wanted to show this person — in a light-hearted way — how important he is to me! He's one of my favorite people, and the world's best creative collaborator too. I hope he got the message….
My husband is super tall, and the first house we had together was built for smaller folk. Dean had to duck whenever he came down the stairs, or he’d bang his head — which he tended to do if he was distracted.
So for Christmas one year, I went around our neighborhood and took photos of the letters D (from Homestead Gourmet Shop), U (Rubie’s Costumes), C (Gray’s Bicycle Shop) and K (Kew Gardens Cinema) — all businesses we patronized. I matted and framed each photo individually, and then wrapped them separately, without indicating which order he should open them. We opened gifts at my mom’s that year, and she’s kind of proper. Dean opened the U first, then the C and then the K. As he opened the last one, he said, “Um … I hope it’s a Y!” When he saw the D, he understood. We hung the letters at the dangerous place on the stairwell, and he never banged his head again.
We’ve since moved from that house, and our current home doesn’t have any tricky spots. But we hung the letters on the wall as a nice reminder of that first house and our lovely Queens neighborhood.