Elysium, I DID weep. Seriously, I have a little tear in the corner of my eye this minute after reading your story! I love your dad, too.
Just to be clear, it’s not so much that my best present was my ACTUAL engagement ring, but rather that I was to marry my husband. Marrying him, truly, was my gift.
I dunno, man. I was also pretty psyched about the ring itself. 
Yeesh, I just thought of another amazing gift we received this summer. A 12-night all-expense paid European cruise along the coast of Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and Croatia. Courtesy of my husband’s grandparents, who wanted to celebrate their 50th Wedding Anniversary in Style, and bring 33 family members with them. We slept in 5 star hotels in Barcelona and Venice and ate in world-class restaurants, and also we got spending money as if it wasn’t already ridiculously generous enough. Seriously, this really happened… and when it was first proposed, I had never even left the country before! Amazing. I got to see Michelangelo’s ‘‘David’’ and the Acropolis in Athens and climb volcanoes in Santorini and it was AMAZING!
And I have to share someone else’s amazing gift. I have a really weird friend, biology and creative writing double major, who is fascinated by science. He met and fell in love with an aerospace engineer. We knew it was true love when she bought him a pterodactyl head for their one month anniversary. She wore the most adorable sneakers on their wedding day.
I’ve had some wonderful gifts over the years but the one that stands out is a stained glass panel my friend made me in the design of a beautiful dove/peace Christmas card I had sent out the year before. She gave me the pieces for my birthday and then took them back to finish putting it together in time for Christmas. It’s my prize possession.
The ones that always get me are when people are psychic. I don’t have a best from my wife, since she gives me the same gift every year: a book that I don’t yet know is going to be one of my favorites. She’s TOO good at that.
My parents come through with the oddest stuff, and they recognize that I’m a big kid still, so last year they managed to snag THE Lego Star Destroyer for my christmas present. Sadly, it’s too big to fit on any of the shelves yet assembled in our current house (working on that!).
Technically I proposed to my husband, so I guess I gave that gift to myself.
My best Christmas gift was the Care Bear I got when I was 4. I really wanted a Cabbage Patch doll (I got one the next year) but it just wasn’t going to happen - either for budgetary or stock reasons. Since I was only 4, I got over the lack of Cabbage Patch pretty quick.
Anyway, he’s an oversized Bedtime Bear that I named “Bear Bear” and I still sleep with him every night (except when I have ‘company’) 24 years later. I think I got so used to sleeping with him that my “sleep style” is dependent on having the bear under my chin.
My best non-Christmas present was when I bought my house. I totally wasn’t expecting any money from my folks at all. I had to make a written agreement with my Grandpa to get a $10k loan for part of my downpayment (I’m still paying him off) and I had busted my ass to save money before that. By the time I was in the house, I was just squeaking by as there were some unexpected expenses, as usual.
I was all ready to just max out my credit cards and deal with it, maybe pick up a second job. I didn’t tell my parents at all how bad it was.
But they gave me a check for $3k, which wiped out all of my CC debt and let me start “clean” with my new home. It was the first time I ever cried when I got a gift, I was so happy.
Another “best gift” is my engagement ring. It’s really pretty nice, bigger than average stone, fancy side diamonds - all chosen by my husband. What makes it such a great gift is that I’ve never felt I’ve had the best of anything. I grew up poor and my parents certainly didn’t make up for lack of material things with love and attention. I always had crappy clothes and not many of them. Never had the best toys. There was a time, when I was a senior in high school, that I didn’t go on a field trip to see Beatlemania with my History of the 60’s class because it was 9 bucks and we didn’t live somewhere where I could get a job because it was too far off the beaten path and my mom worked all the time so she couldn’t take me to a job and, with all that working couldn’t give me the money. At any rate, I never had much. But I met a guy with well-off, generous parents, a good nest egg and as much love for me as I have for him and he bought me a big, fancy engagement ring that I daresay is nicer than that of most anyone else that I might meet.
I remember joking one Christmas (1994) that my “big” gift was the album Parklife, by Blur. My mother would scold me and tell me my big gift was my huge Yamaha keyboard. Well, yes, price-wise, and I appreciated it and used it, but the big gift for me really was that… oh, cripes, it was a cassette tape back then, CDs in my neck of the woods were still a little tough to get a hold of unless they were popular. I played that thing until it broke, brought it tearfully to my dad, who patched it all up and showed me how to do it, and I played it until I had patched it upso many times that the end of “London Loves” and the beginning of “Trouble in the Message Centre” were cut off.
I have the CD now. Heh.
My husband once mailed me a package, before we were married or even dating, that had a little stuffed tiger in it. He was all soft and cuddly, and very, very small. His name was Thor. This cracked my husband up very much, and he said when he saw it, he though of me and had to get it for me. It reminded him of how I was always raging and yet, somehow, just this cute little thing (in HIS eyes, anyway) - like a baby lion cub trying to roar like a big lion. Huh. Now that I no longer rage as much as I used to (in fact, nowhere near as much as I used to), I still hang onto little Thor as a reminder. My husband loved me when I was raging, and he loves me still, even though the beast has been tamed. I take Thor with me when I go on business trips.
Also, Super Pickle. I’ve told this story here before, probably several times, so I’ll condense it: Favourite childhood toy from my Dad, was lost, found, lost, found, destroyed, missing, replaced, shot, replaced, lost… forever. Met my husband, mentioned my old toy in passing one day, he found one on eBay and got him for me as a birthday present. Hooray! Super Pickle lives on!
Hahahahahahaha…
“My favorite gift is the most expensive one I’ve ever gotten!” I guess you wouldn’t have appreciated your ENGAGMENT RING as much if your husband had not come along replete with rich parents to subsidize your delusions of grandeur.
That’s so very heartwarming :rolleyes:
Eat a dick, NightRabbit.
All this venom because I have a nicer ring than lots of people and it makes me feel good after a childhood of having nothing?
I guess the ring is working! 
But, honestly, I adore my husband and would have taken him back to the mouse infested trailer I grew up in, bare fingered, if it meant we could be together.
To me, it meant that he knew my childhood pained me and gave me one thing that made me feel not like the poor kid. It’s not like he’s continued the trend since.
I will call it my en-gag-ment ring from now on in honor of Night Rabbit though.
The best: on our first Christmas, Mrs. Chuck gave me everything I needed to complete my set of Swamp Thing and Howard the Duck* comics. She figured out all the issues I was missing and went to a comic store and picked them up. The guy in the store evidently was really impressed and went in the back room to find a few, especially since she (and I) didn’t care if they were not in mint condition: they were to read. The only one she couldn’t get was Howard the Duck #1, which was very expensive at the time, but he dug up a reprint of the story.
*Don’t let the movie fool you: the comic book was terrific.
I should say, Night Rabbit, that I mentioned that my husband’s parents and nest egg because that I didn’t have to think about the ring being paid for on credit.
But thanks for making me feel guilty about it.
When I was twelve, my brother (who is 11 years older than I) gave me a J.C. Higgins .22 bolt-action rifle that he ordered from Sears. It had a tube feed that holds about 18 rounds. It was my first gun and I was thrilled. I still have it 48 years later.
Best Christmas presents:
Seven years old: Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows board game.
Eight years old: Mattel Creepy Crawlie Hot Plate Creature Maker Set.
Nine years old: Child-sized rose pattern china tea set and a chemistry set and a Barbie Dream Dollhouse and a microscope set.
10 years old: Grandfather’s ruby pinkie ring.
11 years old: Big huge Georgian handmade dollhouse my dad made for me. I still have it and still play with it every once in awhile.
The stuff I’ve received as an adult just isn’t as cool.
Don’t let him (her?) do that, Caricci. It was an inappropriate response and way out of left field. I sort of get where you’re coming from as well. I’d been supporting myself since I was 17 when I met my husband, had really been struggling to get by. He is not wealthy himself, but he’s had a lot of ‘‘trickle down’’ wealth from his astonishingly wealthy grandparents… and because I’m married to him, I’ve gotten some of those benefits too.
At first I very much felt like Cinderella… moments, as I mentioned before, standing in front of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece and eating a 5-star dinner on a hotel terrace overlooking Rome I had to pinch myself to make sure it was real. When you grow up that way, you get into a frame of mind that those sort of things don’t happen for you. You don’t get amazing deep true love and financial stability and frankly some serious spoilage, no, not in this Universe you don’t.
So it took a lot of getting used to. And now I’m less afraid of it, more willing to welcome it in and appreciate it without automatically regarding it with suspicion. And you have every right to do that. Embracing the financial blessings you’ve received in no way negates the authenticity of the love you share with your husband.
I also have a December baby born on 12/26/02. I was induced the night before. The cutest thing I’ve ever seen was my husband all adorably nervous. There was a foot of snow on the ground and he dropped the car keys twice on the way to the hospital.
It was the first time he’d shown any impending panic at the prospect of fatherhood.
Two surprise birthday parties, both while away from home. The first, I was staying with friends in Massachusetts for a summer. They planned a surprise birthday party for me, and made a home made vegan cake in the shape of a turtle (I had a pet turtle). They invited the neighbors and their coworkers. The second was while I was visiting a friend and his family in Honduras. They took me to a beautiful waterfall (Pulhupanzak) with a natural water slide, and the family sang happy birthday to me in Spanish while holding hands in a circle around me in the water. When we got back to the house, it had been decorated and prepared for a surprise party.
Thanks, olives ! You summed it up. I appreciate your post very much. Even now, I can hardly believe some of the better things in life are for me too.
And, for me, there’s more to it. I have to laugh at Night Rabbit’s “delusions of grandeur” reference. If anything, I have delusions of humility, if that’s a thing. My ring is like the one thing I have that I know can hold its own as being really nice. So, I may be a poor little troll for life, but, thanks to my wonderful husband, I do have this.
jackdavinci, I bet you’re very nice yourself, that people would be inspired to do such kind things for you!
Caricci and olives, I’m so glad you have found such happiness after earlier difficult circumstances. I can’t believe your post was jumped on, Caricci, in a thread about GIFTS!
Happy holidays, all!