What's the best gift you've ever given to someone?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This comes up as I consider my holiday shopping list. (Yeah, yeah, I know, the giving spirit is about more than finding big-ticket items that convince people you love them. Please save it for this thread.) I make an effort to give people something meaningful, something that reflects my relationship with them, rather than just going down to the mall and saying, “He golfs; here’s a box of balls. She likes music; here’s a gift certificate to Sam Goody. Repeat ad nauseum.”

I think it started shortly after my father married his second wife (of three so far, though it’s been a few years since I’ve talked to him). She mentioned in March or April of that year how much she liked that “new artist” Cyndi Lauper. (I’m dating myself here.) I filed away that fact, and come Christmas, I remembered and gave her the cassette. Out of the many hundreds of gifts I’ve given, I’ve forgotten many, but that’s one of the ones I remember, because her reaction was so priceless: “Oh my God! Yes! I wanted this, but I forgot! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” And I, as an early teenager, was struck by the honest gratitude a thoughtful gift can elicit – and thereafter I’ve really tried to make the effort.

The best gift I ever gave someone was a going-away present for my brother, who was heading off for an extended summer trip to China, Thailand, and Japan. Other people gave him practical stuff to take with him – I seem to remember one relative, who had overseas experience, providing him with a nice fluffy towel so he wouldn’t have to use the ultra-cheap backwater hotel ones. But I noticed that he kept saying that while the trip would be amazing, the worst part was how much he would miss friends and family.

So I racked my brain, trying to think of something I could give him that would directly address this need. And after much consideration, I had a brainstorm. With only a couple of days before he left, I had to work like crazy, but the results were worth it.

I gave him a huge stack of envelopes. Each envelope was sealed, with a date on the outside corresponding to his itinerary. I made sure he had an envelope for at least every other day of his entire trip, and occasionally for every single day. Each envelope had inside it a letter, some short, some long, many of which corresponded to where he was going to be on that day, based on his trip schedule. In other words, for his whole trip, he was basically getting a letter from me on a regular, predictable basis, without having to deal with the mail.

Some of them were sort of predictable; for example, for the letter dated July 4, I drew a picture of fireworks. I also looked up facts and tidbits about the places he was scheduled to be on various dates, and included those. There was a fair amount of silliness; on an early letter, I added a postscript: “Riddle – Why is Lincoln’s head on the penny? (Answer next letter.)” I made it up; I didn’t have a punchline. The next letter (I was writing them in sequence) didn’t refer to the riddle at all. The one after that had a postscript: “Oops! Sorry, forgot to include the answer to the riddle in the last letter. I’ll put it in the next one.” It went on like that for a while, until I miraculously thought of an actual punchline: “Because if it were his feet, you couldn’t tell who it was.” Not especially funny, but because of the way it ended up being strung out, when I finally disclosed it, he says it was one of the funniest stupid-joke punchlines he’s ever heard.

There were other odd synchronicities, as well: As I wrote past the halfway point of his trip, I started skipping around as ideas came to me, so I had to go back and fill in some gaps. One letter was a very silly example of couldn’t-think-of-anything-else in action: It was a blank piece of paper with a tiny black smudge in the center, plus an arrow pointing to it and the words: “Squashed bug.” The day he opened it, he and his traveling roommate had, not ten minutes beforehand, spent half an hour killing several cockroaches in their bathtub. That was like fifteen years ago, and he still mentions the coincidence from time to time.

Anyway, he got back, and the first thing he said to me (and just about anyone) was how much the letters had meant to him, that sometimes they were the only thing keeping him from losing his mind from loneliness. Needless to say, I’m very, very proud of having thought of this, and I think it’s the best gift I’ve ever given anyone in my life. Well, except maybe for my wife’s engagement ring, simply because its emotional value and life meaning outweigh having kept someone happy and sane on a long journey. But other than that, as far as clever gifts the person greatly enjoyed and didn’t have any idea they needed it and couldn’t have asked for, and as an expression of love, I’ve never topped the package of letters.

I recycled the idea a few years later, when a good friend of mine went to Ukraine on another extended trip and was worried about being lonely. I did largely the same thing, though not quite as involved and complex. I went to the library, for example, and located their Russian-language encyclopedia. Using a “Your First Reader” style book, I figured out the phonetics of the Cyrillic alphabet, so I could translate English words to their Russian approximation. Then I looked up several entries in the encyclopedia – the one for her home state, her home city, and various other relevant bits of background and biographical information – and photocopied them so she could share them with her Ukrainian hosts, in readable form. (Of course, I have no idea what the entries actually said. I’m just pleased I was able to puzzle out the alphabet and locate the items at all.) Trouble was, after a week there, she was so incredibly lonely she opened all of the envelopes at the same time, just to have a connection to home, and then decided to cut the trip short and come back. Still…

Anyway, what’s your best gift to someone? Doesn’t have to be Christmas; could be birthday, wedding, or some other event (like my going-away sequence-of-letters idea). Maybe you’re proud you thought of the idea, maybe it took a lot of hard work to create, maybe it’s memorable just because it meant so much to the recipient. (My letters idea qualifies on all three grounds, which is why I look back on it with such fondness.)

I’m really looking forward to everyone’s responses.

2

Best gift: Me. To the World.

3

Great thread! I really liked your letters idea, and I have no doubt it did mean something very special to the recipient.

I try to do the same thing, although in recent years, my schedule hasn’t allowed to do too much “special” gift giving.

However, for our anniversary one year, I gave the best gift to my wife I’ve ever given. Not that the gift was so much, but it was the way I did it.

The mounting on her engagement ring had become worn, and she was worried about losing the stone, so she had stopped wearing it. I had a friend who was a jeweller, and I sneakily took the ring to him to be remounted. On our anniversary, I sat my wife down and asked her, “If you had to do it all over, would you marry me again?” She replied yes (which was good, otherwise I’d have gone to a lot of trouble and expense for nothing) and I knelt down, offered her the ring and asked her to marry me all over again.

She was overcome at my thoughtfulness and the romantic way I gave her her ring, as good as new.

4

Ad in the paper for marriage/contact.
I really am a busy-body. I like to interfere, when i see a good friend or family-member being lonely, longing for a relationship. But they haven’t got the time for hobbies, for meeting new people and they just drag on, for no other reason but “i am not so desperate/pathetic as to put in an ad”.
After my mother did it for me (see where i got the busy-body genes from?) i have done this for about five people.
They usually were kind of nervous when they got the envelope with responses (i did not keep them suffering any longer than nessecary, so i didn’t tell them unless i had the envelope ready) and one even was angry.
But they all read the letters, had fun meeting the writers, and two of them are happily married now.
I find that they were quite happy to use me as an excuse to the writers. Like: “Well, i am not the type to place an ad, but i have this crazy friend and she placed it for me”.
Even if the ad does not lead to meeting mr or mrs Right, my friends learn that most ad-responders are just really nice, active, people. After all, peolpe who take the direct course to theur goal in this respect, are usullly pretty effective and undertaking in other parts of their lives as well.
My gift really made a difference in their lives!

5

A Venereal disease.
(KIDDING! Kidding!)

6

What a great idea, Cervaise! Caused me to remember a few:

  1. when I was broke–flat out, barely enough to eat–and simply didn’t have money to buy gifts. So I made my mom a year of “coupons”, for house cleaning, car washing, park picnics, garden planting, snow shoveling, etc. She loved it and so did I; we spent a lot of fun times together that year. The company and attention meant more than anything.

  2. When I was working, my mom really, really wanted to go on a trip. (She was an avid traveller, but Depression-cautious about “affording it”.) I saved up, knowing the situation would arise: she yearned for a trip but was going to pass it by. So I bought her full trip to Spain and Portugal.

  3. After our parents died, my sis and I never had one hard word or thought dividing up “stuff”. Years before, an elderly relative had specifically left me a piece of Rookwood art pottery. Much later, I discovered my sis was collecting Rookwood–and she never said a word to me. So I gave her our great aunt’s vase. (BTW, our branch of the family couldn’t have afforded the sucker when it was new!) So the family piece went home to where it belonged.

Veb

7

Great idea Cervaise.
my additions:

  1. the year after our mom died, I gave to my brother a photo collage of our family, and a perpetual calendar with all the relatives birthdays and anniversaries on it (mom was the one who’d remind him ‘remember, it’s Liz’s b’day on Saturday’)

  2. When he got married (and I did this again for my son) I wrote up a bunch of family stories about him growing up, had them bound into a hard cover book. Some of the stories were poignant, others just funny.

  3. Also gave him and his wife a recipe box with family recipes

(sounds like most of them were for him, doesn’t it?)

  1. For my long suffering boyfriend, I’ve given him copies of two books he remembered fondly from his childhood (thank you e-bay)

  2. I’ve made advent calendars for the kids in our family, with pictures of important people in their lives behind the windows.

  3. My long suffering boyfriend, I’ve done a bunch of gifts every year that poke fun at him, give them to his family - like the calendar with his face on a variety of celebrity bodies each month - the cowardly lion, Fabio, one of the Beatles, Sonny, Cher (each), Mr. Spoke, and my personal favorite - the sumo wrestler on skis in mid flight. The last picture named I also had made into a small picture and put into snow globes.

  4. When a friend of mine was going to travel with her two young boys (aged 4 and 8) on a plane to Disneyworld, I packaged up several little bags for them with themes - like ‘open this on the plane’ and inside would be appropriate activities/toys, (nothing really loud or expensive, just new and different, a good bribe)

  5. For several people who had small children, I did this : I had these large plastic Fred Flinstone Heads that were kind of like cookie jars (hair came off, and inside was a space). I filled the space with funny little rubbery or plastic toys, fancy pencils etc, and the instructions for the Fred Head were something like “for rewards, bribes, sorry for your boo-boos” etc.

There may have been others, but these were my favorites that I could think of off hand.

I think gift giving is a high art, and personally I work at it.

8

I think the best gift I ever gave was probably whem I gave my Mom her Mother’s Ring last year. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my mom, but sheis not a ah…shall we say overly emotional person when it comes to gift giving.

She had no idea, and I had a horrible time getting it because it was a custom design, and I had to change the size three times! She actually cried when she opened it. What was even better, was that I put it in this obviously “cheap” bath and body set that I picked up at Wal-Mart or something and she wouldn’t unwrap the stupid thing! My aunt had to unwrap it and get her to “sniff” around!

I don’t think I’ll top that one for a while, where she’s concerned!

Sassy

9

I worked for my former boss for 10 years, and she became a friend as well. A few years ago, she showed me an old photograph of her mom. It was a neat picture, from the 1940s, her mom was about 21 years old in it, wearing a fabulous suit, and drinking a cocktail at a swank bar. It was one of those black and white photos that was hand-tinted. But the photo was also very damaged, it was torn and stained, and very discolored.

A while later, her mom passed away. A while after that, I was over at her apartment when I had an idea. When she was in the other room, I went into her desk and slipped that picture out of its envelope (we had the kind of relationship where that was ok, I confessed to the pilfering later). I had it professionally restored and framed, and gave it back to her for her birthday. She was delighted with it, and I was so pleased because she is the kind of person who is almost impossible to shop for.

10

My dad is notoriously hard to shop for. One year, I realized that every single time we went to a certain restaraunt, he mentioned how he liked a little statuette they had for sale, so the siblings ‘n’ I got one for him for his birthday. OK, wasn’t that big a deal, really. Except when he opened it and saw the box, he said, “Oh, you didn’t buy this, did you?” He laughed out loud when he saw it. I was actually surprised by how excited he was.

11

The secret is to pay attention the rest of the year. WHen you go shopping with someone in the off season, sometimes they will stop and look at something that catches their fancy. But, they wont buy it because it isn’t “practicable” or some other reason. When you get home write it down so you wont forget. WHen you start to do your shopping, get out the list. They normaly forget that they wanted whatever it was and it comes as a very pleasant surprise.

Best Christmas present I gave, was my wifes engagment ring. We had been living together and planning to get married. But, we hadn’t done the “Ring” thing yet. SHe was thrilled.

12

Hmmmmm, this might not be the BEST gift, but when my family was living in Texas, my father tried to grow grapes. He was unsuccessful, partly because none of us are good gardeners, partly because the Texas weather isn’t really cooperative, and partly because we kids kept playing in the wells around the grapevines. So one year, I ordered a set of three grapevines to be sent to his current residence. They actually lived several years, but Missouri isn’t good grape growing country either. And my father STILL isn’t a good gardener. But he was very pleased to get them, as they meant something to him. I think that’s the key, is to find something meaningful.

13

I gave my husband an electronic fish-finder one year that made him pick me up and whirl me around. Not that special a gift, but something he didn’t expect. It really excited and moved him that I bought him that because he was just expecting some routine kind of gift (it was one of our first years together.)

The best gifts I’ve given, though, were usually to parents.

To my mom:

  1. A family ring with stones for herself, my step-dad, me, my brother, and all 3 step-siblings. She cried.
  2. A Christmas portrait with me, my hubby, my brother and his wife and child, all 3 steps, and my foster sister. It was the last time in the forsee-able future that we’d all be together for the holidays. She and my stepdad BOTH cried.
  3. On a year that I had hardly any money, I made all my gifts as framed calligraphy designs. For Mom and step-dad, I made something special. I wrote a little story with us all as the “Bear-dy Bunch” (she and my step-dad collect bears.) The story told a little something about each of us and was illustrated with a little bear dressed as, or holding something that identified the bear as, one of us. She and my stepdad both cried then, too.
  4. A evening, night and morning of babysitting my little foster-sister so they could enjoy a night of peace and quiet and “whatever.”

To my stepdad:
On his first Father’s Day after he married my mom, my brother and I gave him a card. Just a simple little Ziggy card saying that he’d done such a good job that we thought we’d keep him around for another year. My God, I didn’t know a masculine kind of guy could cry that hard. I guess he’d been worried about us accepting him, and to actually get a Father’s Day card from us told him that we definitely accepted him and loved him.

To my dad:
We were taking a little trip through the upper part of the Florida peninsula and found a little “Opry House” type place that had a sign advertising that an old-time country singer that my dad loved was going to be there in a few weeks. We stopped and bought tickets and sent them to him. He and my step-mom had a really great time at that concert and I think it touched him that we’d done such a thing at such a random time “just because” we thought he’d like to see the concert.

14

I made a shadow box with glow in the dark stars in constellations as they appear on our skyline on the anniversary of me and my ex’s engagement. It was basically a diorama of my proposal but instead of in the daytime it was at night, inside a hatbox and I used glow in the dark pen to trace the skyline and those little sticker stars for the stars.

She had no clue what it was when I handed her this box and told he not to take hte lid off, just slide the viewing window open.

Pretty much every othe gify I have ever given was bought and even the well thought out ones just didn’t mean as much as that one.

15

This doesn’t have a lot of emotional punch, but I still think we haven’t given a better gift…

My husband is a huge fan of Clark’s Wallabees. They are a butt-ugly shoe, made in England, cost about $100 a pop (it galls me to pay that much for shoes so ugly), comfortable as hell. My father has feet that are hard to fit, and his shoes have even led to back problems. He’s also notoriously cheap (like his daughter) and would never buy such shoes for himself. He probably should ONLY wear Eccos or Clark’s or other European shoes, given his feet, but he’s just not the type to shell out the cash. So one year, for Christmas, we bought him his own pair of Clark’s Wallabees. He wore them every single day after the day he got them. I seriously think these shoes changed his life!

16

A couple of years ago, I gave my then-boyfriend (now fiancé) my virginity for his birthday. In return, he gave me his. Yay!

As far as material goods, I gave my grandparents and father a nicely matted and framed poem I’d found in an old book of poetry. I typed it in an oldstyle font of the computer, printed it out, stained it with coffe, crumpled it up, and burned some of the edges. It’s a poem called “The Little Black Dog,” inwhich the author simply wonders aloud what would happen if Christ had had a loyal pet dog. (It’s somewhat saccharine and religious for this community, but we all loved it).

My father had just had a major back injury–one that would eventually permanently, and completely, disable him–and our Sheltie Angel had become his best buddy.

The poems brought tears from all, and still chokes my dad up when he pauses to reread it.

17

Wow, big thanks to everybody who’s replied so far. Gives me faith that despite the occasional profane disagreement, we’re all really a bunch of softies at heart. :smiley:

18

Hopefully, the best gift I’ve ever given will be one I haven’t given yet. My parent’s anniversary is on the 27th. Every year we get then something lame, like a new telephone or a bread maker or something like that. This year it’s going to be different.

My mother hates the couch in our living room. Through decades of us lounging around on it, there are a few spots that have been completely worn off. Also, thanks to the dog, there are0a few spots that are best avoided when choosing where to sit.
My mom has done everything she can to fix it. She’s put up patches on the bare spots so it doesn’t look destroyed, but those always come off. She’s washed the cushions but the stains just don’t come off. Finally, she resorted to just covering parts of it with a blanket, hoping the guests will think it’s a nice addition rather than a necessary cover-up.

So we’re going to do something about it this year. My brother, sister, myself, and the grandparents are going in on a present. On their anniversary, we’re presenting them with one large check from all of us specifically to buy a new couch for the living room.

19

We started going out beginning of Nov while both in law school. On my b-day later that month, she offered to cook me dinner. Tho it was my b-day, I got her a present - a red silk camisole. She has been the lovely Mrs D for 15 years now (and will probably tell you it has been all downhill since then!) She was so pleased that I was so thoughtful. Of course, ever the egocentric, I was the one who wanted to “unwrap it” later that nite.

That was a memorable nite - just before I came over she found out her dad was a bigamist, and that she had teenage half-siblings she had never known about before.

See, I made a good first impression, and was able to look good in comparison to a total slime, and I’ve been living off that initial impression ever since!

20

Two years ago, I gave my Mom a personalized calendar for Christmas and she loved it. It’s just a regular wall calendar with color photocopies of photographs for each month’s picture (available at Kinkos). I used photos of my two sisters and myself, and tried to fit each picture to the month: July’s picture was taken at the beach, December’s was at a Christmas dinner and so forth.

Mom hangs her calendar on the kitchen wall and writes all her appointments in it, so it’s really a part of her daily life. Like many parents, she’s sort of obsessive about her kids and I gave her the calendar while one of my sisters was in the Peace Corps and the other was away at school, so this was a daily glimpse at us.

A funny story related to this gift: the outside of the calendar was quite ugly. It was divided into four colored blocks and said “1999” in big numbers. Knowing my mother and realizing that she would be thrilled with the gift, I was very excited to have her open it. When she first unwrapped it and saw the rather unremarkable cover of the calendar, she was nonplussed, to say the least. But when she opened it, she cried.