The Best Gifts

I am shockingly ungifted with the gift of giving gifts. A backward glance at the history of my gift-giving reveals a mosaic of singular ineptitude, a frieze of nincompoopery, arrested moments of unrivalled duncitude. If my gift-giving were a sonnet, it would have 13 lines; were it Romeo and Juliet, it would lack the Capulets; were it a raiding Angle or Saxon, it would have taken the wrong off-ramp to Britain; were it a 100 meter dash, I’d be running it in a spacesuit. The gifts I have given have been ergo sum without the cogito; they have been lime green cargo pants at a faculty tea; they have been bags bursting with botches; they have been premeditated acts with shallowness aforethought. Seeking inspiration, I have lit votive candles to the art of gift-giving, to be rewarded with only a slipstream of silence. I have milked the cow of gift-giving, only to have skim splash into the bucket. When it comes to choosing gifts, my brain shutters its cognitive shop and retires to a back room for a toddy and a nap. Like the demonic sages in Paradise Lost, I have “reason’d high” about gift-giving and found myself “in wandering mazes lost.” The Buddha describes an Eightfold Path to enlightenment, but, when it comes to gift-giving, I cannot find Path #1, and it does not register on my Garmin.

I have committed unpardonable acts of gift-giving. Were the skin of every inhabitant of this planet a manuscript upon which offenses against the art of gift-giving were inscribed, mine would, as Jonathan Edwards said describing his sinfulness, “heap infinite upon infinite.” Over the years, I have given my wife a set of Revere Ware pots and pans—well, it is cookware with a pedigree stretching back to Paul himself; a 30 pound bag of carrots—well, she does like carrots and they are brimming with Vitamin A; a Subway gift card—well, she is an on-the-go woman with a jones for the grilled chicken on asiago bread; and a massive package containing 72 rolls of toilet paper—well, it was a deal too good to pass up and proof positive that I had mastered the art of the deal. I once pilfered my best friend’s golf shoes, polished them, and gave them to him as a birthday present—a gag gift he found as amusing as a computer virus. I have given my grandkids underwear and socks—you simply cannot have too many of these items, don’t you know. I have given my mom calfskin driving gloves, only to learn that she no longer drove. I have given my dad a box of freshly picked, organically grown strawberries, forgetting, somehow, that he suffered from diverticulosis. I have given a colleague a rather nice California merlot, forgetting, somehow, that his religion proscribed “stimulating” beverages. Somehow, for some reason known only to God or Oprah or Joel Osteen, I have managed to turn the act of gift-giving into an incessantly plucked string of self-reproach. St. Francis of Assisi said that “it is in giving that we receive.” I have received a zettabyte of mortification. Emerson says “The only gift is a portion of thyself.” My portion, it would seem, is capaciously meager.

I could, for solace, turn to Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of the gift-giving ritual. A self-cancelling paradox, Derrida claims, lies at the heart of gifting. To give a gift is to enter a tangled exchange which incurs an obligation on the receiver’s part, a debt to be repaid, even if that repayment is no more than saying “Thank you.” A gift, to be received as a genuine gift, must disguise itself, must not appear to be a gift, must transcend the fraught cycle of giving and receiving, must locate itself beyond self-interested calculation or strategic deployment. Givers must be anonymous, Derrida concludes, even to themselves, lest they fall prey to the beguiling snare of prideful self-worth. The gift must not be a given thing, and the receivers must have no awareness that they have received a gift. In effect, a genuine gift annuls itself.

Clever, is it not? A swashbuckling concept, philosophically considered, festooned with panache, but, I suspect, of minimal value in chamfering the sharply disappointed looks of my grandkids when they found the raisins and oranges I anonymously placed once in their Christmas stockings. Like so much of postmodern theory, Derrida’s deconstructed gift is all ad hocery, without wider application and as practical as trying to eat a taco with a fondue fork.

The best gifts are really two gifts: that which is given, and, behind it, the unsurpassed gift of attention. The best gifts mean that the receiver has, at some point, been the singular focus of the giver’s concentrated attention and purposeful planning. They mean that the receiver has been placed on the giver’s icon-laden cognitive desktop and singled out, attended to, deliberated on. The best gifts mean that the receiver has been experienced in the consciousness of the giver. They mean someone has watched the receiver wander off to a certain store aisle, linger in front of something. Someone has looked at the receiver looking. The best gifts mean that someone has listened to the receiver talk, wonder, express a frustration, reveal a desire or need or anxiety. Someone has taken in the receiver’s words; someone has made them a part of their awareness and introspection. The best gifts mean that someone has looked and listened and archived that looking and listening away, to be accessed when a gift-giving occasion arrives. The best gifts mean that in an era that scatters reflection, that startles time and chases it into the underbrush of mass distraction, someone has given the receiver the best gift of all: their undivided attention.

The seemingly simple but surprisingly difficult act of paying attention, of observing and listening, of curating the seen, the heard, and placing it in a small mental annex labeled “possible gift items”—this is the gift behind the gift. I’m working on it. One day I will master it. One day. Until then, I channel Bohr and Heisenberg, experiencing my own little uncertainty principle. Until then, I will be saying what I recently said to my wife Kathy: “Have you decided yet what I am getting you for Christmas?”