Christina at the Northern Cheapskate blog recently wrote about needing a new toaster cover. The old one doesn’t owe her a thing because it’s more than a decade old, a “well-intentioned gift” from her mother that initially left Christina embarrassed. It was an old person’s item. Women in their early 20s didn’t use toaster covers.
Eventually she appreciated the gift. Still, the idea of “needing” a new one made her laugh: “The toaster won’t feel ashamed if it sits on the counter in its natural state.”
It’s more than just a toaster cover, of course.
“We often get caught up in our emotional attachment to things. They become ties to the people we love,” Christina wrote.
I know what she means. More than 30 years ago, my mother added her small drying rack to the belongings I was preparing for a move to Philadelphia with my baby daughter. I’d already bought two large racks because I knew I’d be doing our laundry by hand. Mom’s drying rack was at least six years old and maybe 2½ feet tall. Yeah, that’ll do me a lot of good, I thought.
A few weeks later, I realized what Mom had been trying to say. I love you. I worry about you. I want to help. So I told her how useful the rack had turned out to be – it could hold a surprising number of diapers.
Trying to make life easier
I was in my late 30s when Mom mailed me another gift I didn’t think I needed: a kitchen timer, the same kind bought for herself. I protested that she should have saved her money.
Yet it became as useful as the rack had been, and as emotionally resonant. My mother was trying to make my life easier even though there was very little she could do to change the realities of that life. So I told her how indispensable the timer had become. And when I left my marriage, the device was one of the items I packed.
It had a magnetic back so I kept it on the refrigerator in my new place. One day I somehow knocked it off the fridge and into a bucket of mop water. I actually screamed, “No! Oh, no!” After I’d fished it out I started to cry. My mother had given it to me and now it was ruined.
My only consolation, which made me laugh through my tears, was that I’d put Clorox in the bucket. Just like my mom.
What I wish I could say
I’ve still got the timer, even though it doesn’t work*. And I still use the rack from time to time. These are not typical heirlooms but they’re hugely important to me.
They’re symbols. They remind me that my mom always loved me, even when I was not able to understand or, sadder still, to reciprocate fully.
If only I could have her back, even for a few minutes. I want to tell Mom that I understand what she was trying to do. I want to tell her how much she taught me without my ever knowing that I’d learned it – until I needed those lessons to survive. I want to apologize. I want to thank her.
All I can do is pass along this urgent plea: Never reject a gift, even the simplest gift. To deprive someone of the chance to give is thoughtless at best and arrogant at worst. “I don’t need it” can easily come across as “It’s not good enough for me.”
Or maybe you truly think (as I thought) that the person should save his money for more important things. But what can be more essential than giving? It’s what makes us human.
We are the only species that gives consciously and lovingly. A mother bird feeds her hatchlings because instinct tells her to do so. My mother gave me those gifts because she saw what was wrong with my life. She couldn’t fix it; she could make only symbolic gestures. It breaks my heart now that all I could do was say “thanks.” I didn’t have the vocabulary to say that I understood.
*Edited to add: It’s alive! The timer was resurrected after a few years of drying-out.
Beautiful post. Thank you.
Donna, Thank you for this reminder. My mom died way too soon in my life. It was my grandmother that sent care packages to keep me going. The sugar bowl I have in the cupboard is blue melamine. I look at it every day, and you couldn’t make me part with it!
If only we could go back and say ‘thank you.’
Wonderful post.
You have expressed exactly how I feel about gifts. And you did it beautifully! My mother gave me a very strange tea kettle for an early birthday gift and she passed away unexpectedly a couple of months later (still before my birthday). I did not love that tea kettle, but kept it on top of the stove for many years. She had never given me a birthday gift before my birthday, and I think she must have known somehow that she would not be around for my actual birthday…but wanted to make sure that I had a gift from her.
What a sweet post.
Beautiful post. I need to thank my mom better and more often.
This brought tears to my eyes. I’m an practical person and I don’t care for a lot of clutter, but I’ll be much more gracious the next time someone offers a gift of any kind, even something I may think of as impractical.
Thank-you so much for your beautiful post. I still have an embroidered picture from my Mom, and my daughter still has her croched baby blanket. We both cherish these handmade gifts of love more and more as time goes on.
Just a beautiful and bittersweet piece that made me wince and tear up. Thank you for sharing this.
Beautiful post, Donna. You just write more and more straight to the heart. And today is my own mother’s birthday. I think I’ll send this to her with a little note. Thanks for your gift to all of us in the form of this column. It means a lot.
@Susan: Thank you for writing that. Tell your mom happy birthday, and remind her that it isn’t really a party unless the police have been called.
Donna, you said it better than I could have! I was in a similar situation many years ago, and like you, it took me a while to figure out what was behind the things my mom would bring me … like the day she left a pile of boxes on my porch that turned out to be six cases of canning jars and most of her pear crop. That was 32 years ago, and I still use those jars every year!
@Kate: Once you get canning jars you can keep them for just about freakin’ ever. Eco-friendly AND frugal.
Thanks for reading, and for leaving a comment.
Thank you, Donna. I sometimes have a difficult and complicated (though loving) relationship with my mom. It is good to be reminded how much she means to me and how much I really would miss her if she were gone.
When I left home, my mother gave me an iron. I think she’d had it since before she’ gotten married. I never ironed, but I kept it as long as I had room for it. Finally last year, when I had to sell my house, I gave it away and hope it found a good home with a collector.
I am so lucky to have my mom around, and your article moved me to tears as it made me appreciate her all the more. I can remember (when I was younger) getting quite irritated with her. She seemed to always be giving advice, asked for or not. To me she acted like a “know it all!” NOW I understand how valuable her knowledge truly is. She is a wonderful resource on so many things! Every time I talk to her I pick up another nugget of truth, another piece of her wisdom. Gifts of life that in many ways are the most precious gifts of all. Lovely post !
Thanks to everyone for your kind words.
And please: Call your mom!
I have my mom’s rice pot and each and every time the perfect pot of rice is made, I think of her. You’re right.
Now if I could just get my hands on the pot she uses for pot roast I’d be a happier girlie!
What a beautiful post… Thank you for letting me be a part of it.
This had perfect timing. We just got back from a trip to Virginia to see my parent and grandparents, who I hadn’t seen for 2 years, because of finances. My Grandfather has been incredibly ill, and actually died twice from a heart attack this past fall, but they were able to revive him. While visiting him, he kept giving me things, some I loved, others, I didn’t really want, in part because of lack of room to take them back, and in part because what would I do with them? I accepted them though, because I knew he wanted me to have them, to see me enjoy them, just in case this was our goodbye. I know, that I am going to be very attatched to those things, and that he’s going to be happy at how I took them, and plan to love them. It makes me glad I said yes, to everything.
@Sarah L: Good for you. A little inconvenience on your part meant major happiness for him. Some of them you will definitely be glad you took.
Thanks for sharing your story.
Great article, Donna. I missed this a few weeks ago, but glad I saw it now. I’m like that with things sometimes as well. For me, it’s the little drawings and art that my 7-year old will make every once in a while for her Dad. I will be keeping those things for as long as it’s feasible, and this coming from a guy who isn’t into clutter. It’s the emotional attachment that does it for me.
@Squirrelers: When I fled my marriage, one of the things I brought was a box of my daughter’s old school papers and drawings. To me they are priceless. So is the outfit she wore when I brought her home from the hospital — I kept that, too.
Thanks for your kind words, and for leaving a comment.