I love to give gifts. I love to get gifts. Let me rephrase that..I love to give meaningful gifts. I hate to give gifts just for the sake of gift giving. I hate the mad scramble before Christmas or birthdays when you haven't found the perfect gift and you will feel like a jerk if you show up empty handed. That makes me insane. But there are those times when you find something that makes your heart jump a little for joy because you know the recipient is going to just love it.I have received a few of those gifts in my time. Gifts that you know required thought and knowledge of the one on whom the gift would be bestowed. Case in point. I once received a beautiful Tiffany bracelet from my ex husband. Now every girl loves to get that blue box once in her life but it wasn't so much that it was from Tiffany that made it special. It was the fact that the collection the bracelet came from was called Atlas. It was a greek numeral motif that he thought was cool because I had gone to Greece with my mom and stepdad for her 50th birthday. I still wear it to this day. See, thoughtful. Case in point number 2. My dad is a HUGE Yankee fan. Huge. And my dad I ridiculously hard to buy for. Ridiculously. But last year I got the idea to get him a Yankee jersey with his last name on the back. My sisters and I split the cost and his girls got him a jersey with Havert and the number 11 (his high school football number) on it. Mind you, my dad is not overly excitable but I do believe he really liked it. He kept saying "that is so cool". Case in point number 3. My friend Jack is kinda hard to buy for as well and his birthday was today. When my mom was out visiting in January, we went to the Irvine Valley flea market. I am always on the lookout for vintage cameras and vintage jewelry. So after church on Sunday morning we hoofed it over there and perused the wares. I strike out mightily on my two searches but I stumbled across some amazing vintage movie cameras. What a coincidence, Jack is forging his way into a new career as a video producer and editor. What a fun gift. So I bought one and was giddy at the prospect of saving it for his birthday three months down the road. Now I know myself better than that so I gave it to my roommate to hang on to because I knew if I had it I wouldn't be able to keep it a secret that long. Long story short...I COMPETELY forgot I had it. So yesterday when I was feeling all lame because I hadn't gotten him a gift, my roomie reminded me that I had the camera tucked safely away in her closet. Hallelujah and Praise the Lord. And what a gift it was. He loved it. And the more we checked it out the cooler it got. It still runs and is in beautiful condition. We spent half our dinner taking fun pictures of and with the new movie cam. I hope he liked it as much as I liked giving it to him. Isn't that what gift giving is all about.
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