My thirteen-year old son broke his hand last week. It took a second x-ray to locate the thin shaded line of gray that split the bone in the middle of his palm. But there it was, another crack in the crazy of whatever life is right now. Another plop of poop splashed into the sewer called 2020.
After the InstaCare visit and all his “it wasn’t my fault” and “I don’t know how his elbow fell into mine” followed by my “can we make better decisions that do not include rough housing at school when you are supposed to be physically distancing,” I just did not have another deep breath in me. I was ready to shut the craptastic day down after dinner when an unexpected ding came at the door. There stood Oscar, one of Benton’s neighborhood buddies, with a twinkle in his eye and happy cheeks on his face, holding a blue poster board between his hands.
As we delightedly deciphered the message that the candy wrappers’ and written words strung together, Oscar’s smile broadened. I peeked over his shoulder and saw Oscar’s mom, Kat, whose smile in the shadows matched her son’s as their creative gift turned my frown upside down. I knew how they felt. The giving of a gift is also such a gift to the giver. Receiving, and delivering, a brown paper package tied up with strings really are two of my favorite things.
Of Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages, Words of Affirmation first fill my soul. But in second place – and in hot pursuit- is the expression of love I experience when Receiving Gifts. When we built our home and I had a room in the basement to call my own, I christened it first my “craft room” and then my “office.” But zero amount of hot glue-gunning has been done in the space over the last decade and my laptop finds its’ home every day on the kitchen counter. Instead, that room quickly became – and still is – a shrine to the things I have been given, my treasured treasures. The cabinets and drawers are largely empty, but the walls and surfaces are littered with trinkets that mark the moments of my lifetime.
This disorganized display of my hoarding sentimentality may seem silly and is certainly a professional organizers worst nightmare. But stay back, you with your color-coded Container Store bins. You will not tuck and file away this stuff I have saved. It is not a pile of inanimate things. It is a collection of ways the hearts of my people have reached out and hugged mine over a lifetime of childhood and young adulthood and motherhood, celebrating in my joy and sharing in my despair. Each silently speaks of the love of the giver. And that is really the gift. A gift, especially now, this heart needs to regularly hear.
A few days after the hand incident, still smarting from the fallout, I found my teenage son sitting in his room. He had brought his “Benton Box” down from the top shelf of his closet and its’ contents were scattered all over his bed.
As a young mom, who apparently did have at least one (very unimpressive) crafty moment, I clumsily splattered paint on a wooden box with plans to collect the little things he would receive. I hoped he too would remember the love from having received those gifts and from re-reading the cards and the precious handwriting of those that left their stamp on his life. He invited me to sit down and join him (yay!) and we laughed and cried telling the story of each item, sinking into the memories and the presence of the people in the presents he proverbially unwrapped, again.
I hope that as my son grows, the contents of his badly-painted “Benton Box” will lift his soul when life feels hard. And I sure hope he forgives me for not having a scrapbook or file from when his first tooth fell out or when he took his first step or ate his first piece of broccoli (still waiting on that one.) I’m overjoyed that we can share the language of love felt in the receiving of gifts. And I hope it will be as much a gift to him to give. Which brings me back to Kat.
If you are in Kat’s orbit, and something is out of whack in your world, you can bet your baddest day that some thoughtful thing that says she is thinking of you will appear on your front step or back stoop or mailbox or inbox to, like she is teaching her son, turn your frown a little less upside down. These days, I know not a single person alive whose world is not out of whack and for whom a little thinking-of-you treat really has the power to fill in some of the COVID cracks. But for many of us, this year and all of its’ fear has made us not only more alone, but turned our thoughts frighteningly inward. All of our (valid though they may be) personal battles, all of our (valid as it may be) internal angst, can drive us deeper inside of our (especially pity-partying) selves, narrow our (desperately needing attention) focus further and further on and about our very own selves. It’s easy to see nothing but our own problems, our own pain, our own predicaments. In that cycle we risk becoming stuck and sad and selfish. But I believe that one way to un-stick is to make the effort to help someone else. Maybe one of those ways is to pull a (Kit) Kat and think of whose doorstep you could (safely) stand with a candy-bar card. It doesn’t have to cost 100 Grand, it doesn’t require Mounds of money; the gesture alone will bring a whole lot of (Almond) Joy. The smallest Whatchamacallit can be a Life Saver.
Perhaps when the dog bites, or when the bee stings, or when more unexpected cracks are making you saaaaad, you can simply deliver somebody something and then you won’t feeeeeeeeellllll so baaaaaaddd.
Thank you for indulging another one of my favorite things: any opportunity to make a Sound of Music reference.