gifts men have given me

I’m speaking of the material kind: not love or praise or cultural or spiritual legacies or anything, but stuff, the kind of stuff that can be passed from hand to hand or wrapped in boxes with paper or ribbon or delivered in the mail.

Lest there be confusion or uncertainty here, let me say right away that I’m not saying the material kind of gift is superior to the immaterial or vice versa; nor am I listing any of the gifts I’ve given men, nor all the ones they’ve given me. This post would go on forever if I listed all the exchanges.

I just thought there might be something in this, though I’m not sure what.

MY FATHER

Cut from 2008 to 1952.

My parents were divorced, and my father lived far away in another state. I almost never saw him, and between 1952 and 1964 I remember only one time when he came to New York.

My mother tells me this story of that one visit. It’s 1952; I’m five years old. When my father came to pick me up and take me out, she overheard me say to him, ‘Since you didn’t bring me anything, let’s go to Woolworth’s, and you can buy me something there.’

* * *

How to interpret that?

Let me count the ways:

1) Imagine not bringing a child of five a present! I usually try to bring a little something when I visit a household with a young child, especially if it’s a family I don’t visit too often.

2) But when the visitor is the child’s father, and he hasn’t seen her for a long time – imagine not giving the child something!

3) Well, I sure was direct, wasn’t I?! I wish I’d had all my life the ability to ‘ask’ so it ‘could be given’ me…

4) Obviously my mother remembered that remark because she felt it was pretty awful that he arrived empty-handed to see his child.

I can’t remember what we got at Woolworth’s, though I can tell you that – surprise! – there’s now a Duane Reade in the space where that Woolworth’s used to be.

* * *

Yeah, well, my father has a pretty bad track record as far as gifts are concerned. That must be the reason I’ve selected this topic, because I was marked forever by his negligence in this area.

Most Christmases I saw him, if only because he lived in the same state as my grandmother, whom I visited at that time. One year when I was about 7, he gave me dusting powder for Christmas; not a very appropriate present for a child, but that’s what it was.

For my birthday, three months later, he gave me the identical container of dusting powder: same brand, same kind, same everything.

I remember being very upset and not knowing what to do, because Writing Thank-You Notes for gifts was one of the great moral laws of my childhood.

My mother suggested that I might remind him of the previous gift.

So I did….

* * *

I have to give him this credit: he sent me another present, a metal name-embosser with my name on it, so I could emboss my name on paper or envelopes or whatever.

* * *

When I got married the first time, he said he would pay for the honeymoon. He encouraged us – urged us – to spend the first night at the Plaza, which we would certainly never otherwise have done. My then-husband picked out a modest B & B in western Pennsylvania where we spent a few nights. He refused to send my father the receipts for the rented car, because we were driving to his parents, and then-husband said that wasn’t officially part of the honeymoon.

When my father got the receipts for the night at the Plaza and the B& B, he called me and said, in a voice that I can only describe as nasty, I’m glad you went first class all the way.

* * *

That was 1970, and that was the last gift I got from him, though he’s still alive this very day, April 6, 2008.

MISCELLANEOUS BOYFRIENDS
1957 - 1969

I remember a sweet valentine with hand-drawn hearts and flowers (and bugs, which he loved) from a boy who liked me in elementary school. He’s now an entomologist.

My freshman/sophomore-year boyfriend in college gave me a sexy bra; I was so embarrassed that when I saw what it was, I closed the box.

My senior-year boyfriend gave me an embroidered jacket from Mexico, where his family went for spring vacation; and a Penguin paperback of Don Quixote (I never read it).

Not an exhaustive list, but as many as I can easily remember.

MY FIRST HUSBAND

We mostly gave each other books and records. When I use those books, I see the inscriptions and have such mixed feelings: good feelings about him (it’s a long story….), embarrassment that my children or some current boyfriend might see the inscriptions, ambivalence about tearing out the pages with the inscriptions. I think I’ve left most of them in.

OTHER BOYFRIENDS

Between husbands, I had a romance with a younger man who gave me a lovely India-print yellow scarf with gold threads running through it, sort of hippie-ish, as he was.

Another boyfriend of that general period (an awful person, another long story….) gave me a book that I wanted to get myself, because I needed it for work. After we broke up, I hated having this book that I used all the time signed to me by him, so I tore out the page with the inscription.

MY SECOND HUSBAND

A few months after we met, he gave me a beautiful, delicate, expensive-looking hand-fan, because I use them a lot in the summer. It was the nicest thing he ever gave me.

I’ll fastforward here: in the later years of our marriage, for Christmas presents to one another we gave donations to charities in each other’s honor (he didn’t do that the final Christmas we were together, but then, he knew it was the final Christmas and I didn’t) and token smaller presents.

See here for the token ‘present’ he gave me that last year, a kitchen sponge.

PERFORMER

We were dating almost six months, between 26 June and 16 December 2007, and in that time he gave me –

Nothing.

No flowers, no books, not even a cupcake, nothing.

* * *

Wait a moment! I’ve forgotten: he did give me a book – his own, a spiral-bound, self-published, paperback ‘book’ (if you can call it that) with his photograph prominently displayed on the glossy cover.

It was the first thing I picked up to return to him when I arose from my shock after he dumped me and began to gather things that were his.

Yes indeedy I sure didn’t want that pleased-with-itself face smiling at me from the piano any more.

* * *
You may remember that Performer had mentioned to me that he ‘liked to give expensive jewelry to women,’ and that I was concerned because I didn’t wear expensive jewelry and in fact preferred inexpensive jewelry.
But, I wondered aloud in a post way back when, maybe I should ‘allow’ him to give me something nice, to satisfy his need to give ‘expensive jewelry’.

!!

Ha ha.

I needn’t have worried.

PLAN C

On Friday 15 February, five days after my first meeting with Plan C, a vase with the bouquet pictured in this post arrived, a post-Valentine’s gift (I had been away the day before).

On Friday 22 February, Plan C had (I discovered when I went to the bedroom) placed on my pillow a fancy shopping bag with a ribbon. Inside the bag was a wrapped box with an envelope attached. Inside the envelope was a very emotional letter explaining to me that this was the last piece of jewelry he had given his wife. Inside the box was a silver necklace.

(Plan C – in case you don’t remember – is a widower.)

I was, of course, very, very embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say or think or do. Yes, although you might not think it, I’m sometimes at a loss for words, and I was then.

Although I had already begun to feel that things were going to work out with Plan C, that he was the right man for me, that the love that was emergent was going to last – I did feel it was too soon for something like this.

But I felt more uncomfortable about the idea of giving it back than about the idea of accepting it.

So I didn’t give it back, but I did express my embarrassment. I did it in terms of my reluctance to own or to wear ‘expensive’ / ‘nice’ jewelry. I said that I couldn’t wear it just anywhere, that I’d only wear it places close by, where I didn’t think I’d be likely to lose it.

Plan C appeared to accept that condition. And perhaps he caught on to my general reluctance to appropriate the necklace.

I’ve only worn it once, to the birthday dinner described in the previous post. No one in my family seemed to notice that it was new to me.

* * *

That same weekend he also brought a small bouquet of fresh-cut flowers.

* * *

For my first sleepover at his house, Plan C bought me a thick, long white terry cloth robe. He said he had wanted to get me a pink one but couldn’t find one in the right size.

He has a white terry robe also, and it’s funny to see us in our matching robes; otherwise we look so terribly unalike.

* * *

Around that point in our history, about a month ago, I mentioned all these presents to my psychiatrist, when I was mentioning a few problems I had with Plan C (that, for one, the extreme separation angst he felt when we were apart was burdensome to me). My psychiatrist hazarded the notion that Plan C was ‘trying to bind me to him with gifts.’

That idea instantly made sense to me, though I thought it was entirely unconscious on Plan C’s side. I had already noticed that he was very ‘givey,’ that he had mentioned bringing flowers to one of his many internet dates, and that he had given a necklace to another. So it seemed to be one of his ways of relating romantically to women.

* * *

I mentioned the shrink’s idea to Plan C, and lo and behold! the flowers stopped coming with him every Friday. That was fine with me, in fact sort of a relief. Were the gifts – the too-many gifts – a sign of insecurity on his part? I don’t know, but I couldn’t have accepted any more. Any more would have been de trop.

* * *
Then there was my birthday last week.

I was afraid he would give me more jewelry, something new if not something that he had given his wife, so I had (politely I hope) made it clear that I really did like the cheap silver stuff I wore every day, and that expensive jewelry made me jumpy because it was such a responsibility.

The birthday present was extravagant in a new way: it was a gift certificate to a spa.

* * *

Let me qualify what I said: it was a huge gift certificate to a spa. The accompanying card had the amount, and it was enormous. I was shocked. No one had ever given me something so expensive.

On the good side: I was able to thank Plan C sincerely and enthusiastically, because it was really a very smart idea.

Now you may find this impossible to believe, but never in my whole life, in my 61 years, have I had a manicure! Never! Nor have I had a pedicure (my toenails look really lousy; fortunately the night my toes were sucked by Man 1 last June, the room was dark…). Nor have I ever had a professional massage or a facial or a mud bath or any of those things, the things they do at spas.

I do my own fingernails, and they look it. I mean, they look pretty lousy. So long as they shine a bit and the nails are more or less even, I feel I’m doing fine.

So I guess it’s not such a bad idea for me to be better groomed – not that Plan C meant any such insult.

Actually he had visions of me naked in hot baths or being massaged or something that would get me sooooooooooooooo relaxed that I’d be in a great state when I returned home to have sex with him.

Well, I think that might have been in his thoughts. Maybe he was thinking of the stress of my work this year. Or maybe just that he had never heard me mention any spa-related experience and thought I might enjoy it.

* * *

So I was genuinely surprised at and pleased with the gift, though Plan C was I think disappointed that I just thought of getting zillions of manicures and pedicures (they’re the cheapest services on the list) rather than a few very fancy massages. He thought if I’d never had a professional massage, I ought to have one. But I said I was modest about my nakedness, and was happy to be naked with him, but not with anyone else, even a masseuse. And I emphasized my pretty-desperate need for a manicure and a pedicure, maybe regularly.

* * *

But the amount of the gift certificate was too huge, and it leaves me with a dilemma: when his birthday comes up in May, do I have to give him an equally expensive present?

Logically I don’t, but he certainly upped the antes.

I may even mention this problem to him, but I don’t need to at the moment. I have no idea what I’ll give him for his birthday.

But I think sometime before next year’s birthday I’ll ask him not to spend so much on me, that even though I love the manicures et al. (assuming I do), I’d feel more comfortable if he spent less on me.

I have time to think that one over.

* * *
I see that I began by complaining about my father’s negligence in the giving area, and that I’ve ended by complaining about Plan C’s superabundance in the same area.

I don’t think it’s that I’m a born complainer; I think those are just the facts, and they’re extremes. I like to think that Plan C can work his way down to more modest gifts. Whether they do, as my shrink suggested, derive from a need to ‘bind me to him with gifts,’ or whether he just spends differently from me (and I think he does), whatever the reason, I’m more comfortable with less. But until Hanukah and Christmas come around, he won’t, I hope, need to give me anything.

I do need a break from gifts.

* * *

But I want to say: Plan C is very generous. You may remember that getting into bed together, our second time, he started telling me his charitable deductions…..! I don’t mean to suggest that he ‘brags’ about his gifts, because he doesn’t. He’s not rich, but he does give large presents, to me, to his sons, and to charities.

* * *
Of the 84 women he dated (beginning about a year after his wife’s death and ending when he met me this February), only 3 of them (and I was one of those) offered to pay her share of dinner.

But Plan C’s dating life will be the subject of another post…..This one is long enough.

* * *

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