My oldest son has started to be thoughtful and to give gifts that he selects on his own. Well, started is not the right word–he’s been doing this for over a year. But it’s nice that he’s starting to remember things like birthdays and Fathers Day on his own.
Although how well he knows me is a little, well, wanting, perhaps based on what he got me.
He went to an antique mall and got me three books:
- The Runaway Jury and The Judge’s List by John Grisham. You know, I’m not really a big fan of the legal thriller; I think I read a Scott Turow thing in the 1990s. I do read Erle Stanley Garner books from time to time, but Perry Mason mysteries are not the modern legal thriller. Are they even a thing any more?
- Bastion of Darkness by R.A. Salvatore, book 3 of the The Chronicles of Ynia Aielle. I don’t have the first two, of course. It reminds me of the lot of books I got from my brother that he’d picked up in the Corps but divested himself of by giving them to me for seven years’ worth of Christmases (in one box). He’d picked up the first or the first two books of trilogies but not the last, so I don’t know how so many things turned out. I did, at one point, but the complete omnibus of Salvatore’s Icewind Dale trilogy for them when I was hoping to get them interested in reading adult books. I just claimed it for my own in January when we culled my youngest son’s room. So, who knows? I might read this book independently. The cover doesn’t have a drow on it, so it’s got that going for it.
He also got me a Marvel Heathcliff #3 comic (the lower shelf of the chairside table is full of the comic books culled from the youngest’s room, and a lot of them are of the older brands, and he (the gift giver) knows I have some Heathcliff paperbacks, so I can see what he was thinking here). He also got me a gospel record, Whispering Hope by Jim Roberts and Norma Zimmer, because, as he said, I like church music on Sunday mornings. Ah, gentle reader–I played Take a Little Time to Sing by the Swedish Gospel Singers every week for a long time, and I’ve been known to spin some Tennessee Ernie Ford or Nat King Cole gospel platters, but I’m not a big fan of the small-label, regional or local gospel acts–although I do have a lot which I got from my brother at one point, and several I’ve received from my mother-in-law or my sainted mother. When I got the crates of records from my brother, I listened to them over a long period of time because, well, they’re not my favorites. But the boy, I guess man now, saw them around, and so he got me one.
So: It is the thought that counts, and I am surprised and pleased that my son thought to give me something.
However, it kind of matches my disappointment in myself and my own gift-giving these days. I know I’m having more and more trouble buying gifts as the years go by. When the boys were young, I bought them a lot of toys and novelties, too many, probably, but they seemed happy unwrapping. Now, though, they’re hard to buy for. The oldest, like me, buys what he wants to support his hobbies and interests. The younger does not do much outside the glass screen. And I’m not fond of just giving gift cards, but sometimes we do.
I am not sure if I’m lamenting the trappings of our relative affluence–we have what we need and what we want–or the atomization and separation in even our family. Maybe this is just a part of them growing up and me having to let go. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
