Beech Tree News Network

Sometimes, my granddaughter, Sabria, wraps up her small toys and gives them to me as gifts.  She tells me it’s my birthday or Christmas or Mother’s Day, and we’re going to have a party.  She gets into my basket of excess ribbon and tapes it to the wall.  She gets notebook paper or copy paper or construction paper, wraps it around a squirt gun or a Happy Meal toy then seals it with a gazillion pieces of scotch tape and presents it to me with an, “Open it, you’re going to be surprised!” 

                When I do open the gift, I feign surprise.  Sabria is pleased and goes back to her toy box to find something else she can wrap.  When I open a gift from Sabria, I have learned that the gift isn’t always what it appears to be.  Last week, I made the mistake of thanking her for the pink dish towel wrapped up in a box she gave me.  “That’s not a dish towel, it’s a—what do you call the thing on the bride’s head?” she asked.

                “A veil,” I answered.

                “Yes, it’s a veil,” she said.  I thanked her then wore it around on my head for the next half hour.

                When I open these gifts, I think of my own mother.  She would often go around her house and take things from her shelves to give as gifts.  This was after I was grown, after a sixteen-year separation, after my sisters and I had reintroduced ourselves. 

                My biological mom held on to very little.  I remember putting her onto a Greyhound bus once with a paper bag packed with a few clothes and a cactus my sister and I had given her for Mother’s Day.  The next time I saw her, she had neither the bag nor the cactus and couldn’t remember where she’d left either.

                She gave me a small wooden rocking chair husband number five had hand carved.  I tried to tell her she didn’t have to, but she berated the man for his selfishness until he was ashamed not to give it to me.  I have a few other odds and ends she gave to me over the years: a green shell vase, some wooden goblets, a small Japanese cup and saucer.  She also gave me a book about how to recognize native plants, like Ginseng.  I don’t know where she came up with the items. 

                The one thing I have that I know she valued was a single shot rifle.  She said she and my dad used to rabbit hunt with it.  It’s hard to picture that; really, it’s hard to picture she and Dad doing anything together that didn’t involve arguing.  Mom didn’t actually give me the rifle, she asked me to hold onto it for her when she was going through a particularly hard financial time.  I think she was afraid she’d sell it.  After she died, I ended up with it by default. 

                Mom never held a job for very long.  She lived a transient’s life, never holding on to much.  She was born poor, but was never able to rise above it, like all those success stories you see in public interest segments on TV.  When I see something like that, I wonder what it would have been like for her to see that type of story.  It was probably like a commercial for Publisher’s Clearing House announcing, “You too could be a winner” or even a tennis shoe ad inferring, “You too could play for the NBA.”  It was really that far from reality for her.

                Mom was very child-like all her life.  She never really understood how things worked.  She didn’t see giving her possessions away as giving used items as gifts, any more than Sabria would think of it as giving you a used gift.  They were all she had, and she was willing to share, much like the story of the widow’s mite in the Bible. 

                Every year, on my birthday, my youngest sister sends me a card with five dollars inside.  Every year, I cry when I open it.  For my sister, five dollars is the widow’s mite.  It was my mom who taught me to value that gift.