Our youngest
child graduated from high school this spring, and our gift to him was a grad
party. Grad parties are a big deal where
we live – white tents, catered food, a fancy cake, and a display of photos of
the graduate growing up. And, of course,
that pretty box for guests to place their cards!
Last
weekend, as we wrote yet another check to place in a pretty box, we got to
talking about giving gifts. This summer gifts
have almost exclusively been of money. We
took a step back and considered what gifts we have we been giving each other
this summer. And, what makes a good
gift? Money? Time? Our
favorite gifts to give each other are gifts of our self with the other in mind.
We learned
this a while back when some friends recommended that we give a gift of
ourselves to each other for two weeks. They
encouraged us to choose a simple, everyday gift, something we did not readily
do. Examples of their past gifts to each
other were putting the toilet seat down after going to the bathroom during the
night and putting the cap back on the toothpaste after using it.
This sounded
like a simple, fun challenge to us and so we gave it a shot! Mark gave Mel the gift of control of the TV remote,
and Mel gave Mark the gift of closing the kitchen cabinet doors. What an interesting two weeks! Mel decided to not use the TV remote, but to
leave the television off the entire time, and Mark didn’t walk into any open
cabinet doors. These small gifts became
significant. Mark gave up control to Mel. And, we chose evening activities we probably wouldn’t
have otherwise chosen, like doing a puzzle together and baking cookies. Mel created a new habit of closing cabinet
doors and it has stuck until this day. We
learned that gifts don’t need to be lavish.
Doing something slightly out of our comfort zone for each other is a
real gift of self – and it’s free.
Love this little nugget of wisdom - thank you for sharing Mark & Mel!
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