On Gifting
It is easy to hide behind the sales and discounts of purchase, a cursory understanding of hobbies, and a quick whisper or two to acquaintances, “do you think she will like this?”
Boxed and wrapped, upping anticipation, a poor gift is a substitute for soft-spoken words, kindly attitudes, and compensation for not paying attention.
For the best gifts are rare – a phrase in a tome, a scent in an old box that allows for yearning, a choice, a placating voice note. It comes not off the shelves in wrapping paper, labeled and cheered on as you hand it over under a balloon sky. It slips in days after the day of note. It rescues you from discomfort, assuages pain, or even offers itself up in sacrifice to ignite a spark. Here, you say, a book of poems – he carries it away and with it, sentiment and the promise of a rendezvous.
A gift appends itself to your life in a way that helps you forget a dreary chore, fight a dark cloud or free a trapped thought. It is sometimes an insertion into your existence – unnoticed but dependable, gallant but disguised, embellishing but also repairing. The success of a gift is a measure of the down payment in time. Have you truly heard? Have you truly listened? Have you installed your mind in their presence? The anchoring of your heart to their world. To exit your personal narrative briefly. Have you put aside your life, even for a minute, to participate in theirs? Therein, the gift arrives.
Sometimes a gift is a reminder – of the person you were or the person you want to be: a feminist, an intellectual, an artist, a baker – someone, anyone – worthy of conversation, worthy of connection. It is a telling clue, when lost, on the way home. A gift can thus direct your fate, “it all started with the pottery book” she laughs. A deaf bookkeeper, a misunderstood homophone, and the house is filled with pots instead of poems.
Good gifts are sown only once but they are reaped many times over. A faded pair of socks, a recipe, a new meaning to a word. Even inanimate on the mantel, functionless gifts, a single glance can be transporting. You arrive at a time when you were young, full of adventure and fierce declarations of love – the past that seems like an alternate reality. In this way, they are also diaries. Bookmarks of the self and others. Once you were close with her, now you are not. Although, a diary by itself is also a return gift – here is where you trap time, live forever and upon your passing allow those who love you to borrow your eyes.
Some gifts are passed on – compliments to the chef, prayers, and answers – with purpose. Others are also passed on – shawls, questions, silver plates, trinkets – for a mismatch in style or a lack of shelf estate. The serendipitous of the lot comes from strangers and children. Uncoerced, untainted by the knowledge of you; an offer of a seat on the bus, a pointed finger and whispered admiration for your braids.
But ultimately, gifts are not to be kept or saved. They’re meant to be shared and purveyed. They’re meant to teach us how to love and also how not to be. They’re decisive hallmarks or products from the industry of our relationships. They have existed forever. Gifts – as we call them now – are as much giving as getting. For the best gifts are rare; they’re simply moments in time.
