DID YOU DO IT? Will you do it? We did it right under the tree. Margaret and I re-gifted.
Since childhood, Margaret has made herself well understood on the topic of gifts. One Christmas she simply made two piles: The keepers and the take-backs, stacking the boxes in their respective columns right there, under the Christmas tree, and in front of the givers. She was 12. I was as amazed as I was appalled, but remained inclined to thank my parents and grandparents and shove the gift in some drawer.
Not Margaret, who was honest to a fault as soon as she could speak. Me, I still own a terrycloth bathrobe whose huge turquoise and cerulean blocks make me look like an enormous stained-glass door. It’s one of the yearly gifts my father insisted on buying all by himself, and he’s been dead for 30 years. It hangs in my bathroom to this day, having survived so long from such little use.
This year, like most people, we greatly reduced the gift-giving in our household, and while there were actually a few new things under the tree for others, what Margaret and I exchanged were almost solely re-gifted items, and while I adore all of them, perhaps what I like best is the little tale that accompanied each.
As the last bit of ribbon was tugged off the heart-rate monitor box, came, “I actually thought I’d go to the gym. So I went shopping first. Fitness by retail, you know. But you actually go to the gym. Do you have one of these? No? It’s yours.”
Or, the ancient piece of silver tea ware that was bestowed with the comment, “Grandpa probably lifted this from the people he worked for.”
Or, my personal favorite: “Yes, it’s my old Blackberry. You have to move into the 21st century, Marion,” accompanied by my husband’s soft laughter into which he embedded, “I don’t know how well this is going to go,” as I stared down the odious thing in my hand.
Of course we are hardly the only sister re-gifters this year. The Christmas copy of The New York Times brought a story on this, the last paragraph of which presents us with the spritely tale of Jayne and Joan Michaels, twin sisters who once passed between them the same man who, in turn, gave the sisters the same gift. Marvelous.
So, what’s on your re-wrap list?
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You forgot to tell them about the new stuff we exchanged: timely and really needed in both directions. I got three shiny red rechargeable Coleman lanterns that have CFLs in them (and I had a power outage again within days, so I was ready, thank you); I gave you a slow-cooker that you’d been craving (and not one with those awful floral patterns painted on the sides, either).
Nobody, not even me, shoved anything away in a drawer or otherwise piled it in the discard department. At least not while I was looking…
Margaret and Marion, I so enjoyed your web pages, and the Christmas gift exchanges made me laugh out loud. Thank you for the honest good holiday cheer; I can’t wait for next year’s gifts.
Now I’ll do something I think is very funny and Margaret will know who I am. Living in the close proximity of the state park, I took the abbreviation T.S.P. as Taconic State Park. Being the oldest two sisters in T.S.P. is the way it started, and made perfect sense to me.
My sister and I were known as the Hill sistas when we worked in NY, and my husband, Ray, still calls us the sistas. Now my daughter and her exchange sister call each other sistas as many others their age do, too. So I read through the blog up until the end with Taconic/… and then I realized oh, it’s The Sisters Project ….
It was late last night for me to ring in the New Year I was lacking sleep and had fun with all the neighbors of Taconic State Park at dinner and enjoyed seeing Margaret there, too. … JD
Welcome, Janet. Yes, living as you did (and still do) and as I do essentially IN one TSP it is funny now to be blogging ON another TSP. So you tried to be a commenter named TSP and realized, oops, that won’t make any sense at all (except to Margaret, the other “double TSP” sister)? Ha!
Happy New Year to you, too. To let others know about our celebration: another TSP neighbor (the park kind, not the blog kind) organized an impromptu dinner and we neighbors all met “downtown” in our hamlet at the only establishment there is. We’ve never done that before, and it was perfect.