Gifts. Some are particularly bad and ill-chosen. I shudder when I think about them. Some are so sweet and inspired. A lot are predictable. Not unwanted, but nothing to inspire for the ages. Bottles of wine and booze. Gift cards (if you actually want to patronize the place). Food baskets. But what if you don't like what's inside? Chocolate? Cheese? And who needs so much fruit it rots before you can finish it? The small selection of comestibles shown arrived from my niece. Colorado gourmet products. That will keep until we sample them.
I have two cutting boards in my kitchen. (Shown above.)One, a wooden one, has the edges trimmed like a book. It was a gift from our long-time bookkeeper. (Who died in 2006. And who loved to order gifts from catalogs. This one, I think, is the only one we still have.) The other is a sort of glass affair with a photo of peppers and green onions made to look like a mouth. It was a gift from a couple that used to live in Austin and may again. They seemed particularly astute about gifts. It's funny: when you keep a gift for a long time you remember the people who gave it to you in a found way.
The book shown at right also arrived yesterday from my niece. It is a wonderful book of essays about these centenarians and super-centenarians accompanied by fantastic portraits. I'd never seen this book, but I'm delighted with it. Just the intro (by the 'young' Norman Lear) is a delight. A gift you like that you didn't know existed is wonderful.
Tomorrow I am going to go through my old blog entries and find some more things to say about gifts from past entries.
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