Bestest Gifts

Dad and Sarah in Alden, New York 1986

        Wrapping Christmas gifts the other day, I suddenly remembered the year that Dad said something to the effect that he likes to unwrap lots of presents on Christmas morning. So I bought a dozen golf balls and put each in its own box and wrapped each one. The boxes were different sizes so it would not be too obvious once he started opening them – and they made a decent sized pile under the tree. Dad got a big kick out of that.

        You know, it has always been my experience that men, especially Dads, are hard to shop for. They usually do not need much. And the things they might want tend to be expensive toys and/or tools. I never thought of my Dad as particularly materialistic, and I always admired his stoicism when he opened his small pile of packages each Christmas morning knowing that we were stuck for ideas. So imagine my surprise when he said, months before Christmas that one year, that he really likes a pile of a lot of presents. He quickly countered the image of materialism that popped into my head when he then said what was in the wrapping did not matter as much as the fact that there was just a bunch of things to unwrap.

        So that’s when the idea of the 12 golf balls hit me. And it turned out well. After that, we would get him golf balls every year – Dad by then was golfing for business and fun most afternoons during good weather. And they weren’t always wrapped individually. We just tried to be sure he got lots of stuff to open on Christmas morning.

        After a while he asked us not to buy golf balls anymore. Dad said he just loses them and they are too expensive to spend that kind of money on him! Whenever he ran out of golf balls, he would purchase used ones at the clubhouse. Sometimes we wrapped up golf balls we found in the neighborhood or where ever so that we were complying with his wishes for golf balls that were not brand new.

        One year I bought a few bags of candy corn when they became 50% off the day after Halloween. And those bags got wrapped up for Dad for Christmas. Candy corn was his favorite. He enjoyed unwrapping those too and understood why candy corn.

        Many years ago when Sarah was about to begin kindergarten, I asked people for their stories about their first day of school or what they remembered about kindergarten. Actually I still ask people about this and have yet to compile them – I was going to do it for Virginia’s first day of kindergarten this year and the day got away from me – maybe for Horatio’s first day the collection will be done and will include his big sister’s remembrance too!

        Well, before Sarah’s big day, I had a few stories from folks including a couple of dire ones from my Mom – she and her family lived in Newark, New Jersey during her kindergarten, and it was an awful experience. Asking my Dad for stories from his childhood I knew was risky – the question itself could be a trigger moment that caused bad feelings – but I decided I would ask anyway – at worst he would ignore the request or say no – at best (I thought) I would get a story about kindergarten that would be new to us because, as you might guess, Dad had never mentioned kindergarten that I could recall.

        In 1989, when Sarah began kindergarten, we were living in Plano, Texas, and Mom and Dad were in St. Augustine, Florida. Instead of exchanging letters, we talked on cassette tapes – they were 30 minutes on each side and usually we did not talk for more than one side – we would record over and over until the tape wore out and then we sprang for a new tape. This was easier than writing letters which I especially would tend to put off doing, and then Mom would be upset if two or three weeks went by without hearing from us. And tapes were less expensive than phone calls – long distance calls were charged by the minute – so we usually only spoke by phone on special occasions.

        The summer before Sarah began kindergarten, I sent a tape to the folks, and included on the tape was a modest request, “Mom has sent a few stories about kindergarten, but we were wondering if Dad has any kindergarten stories he would like to share with us?”

        When they got the tape in the mail, they saved it for dinner, playing it at the table while they ate. When the tape was finished, Mom pressed the off button, turned to Dad and said, “Do you have any memories of kindergarten?”

        Dad said that he did not go to kindergarten!

        Mom never knew that.

        Dad said his mother thought he was so smart that she put him directly into first grade!

Dad and me September 1980

        Then Dad started talking and did not stop talking until he had told Mom the whole story of his childhood! There was so much Mom had never heard before. What she had heard before over the course of their many years of marriage was just bits and pieces out of context – she could never put it all together – what happened when, why things happened, what had been so horrible. Finally, at last she knew.

        The next day Mom repeated the story on the tape and sent it back to me. It filled two cassettes. I still have them.

        When people ask what is the best gift I ever received. My answer is ready – aside from actual human family members, the best gift I ever got came in the mail one day on two cassette tapes. It was not Christmas, and all I had done to receive it was to ask one innocent question.

It is worth all the candy corn and golf balls in the world!

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