Whenever my kids and I finish a visit with my relatives, we have
received so many gifts it takes three people to load the car and
two to close the trunk. By the time we pull away, we have enough
supplies to live out of our car for a week.
Whenever my kids and I finish a visit with my relatives, we have received so many gifts it takes three people to load the car and two to close the trunk. By the time we pull away, we have enough supplies to live out of our car for a week.
I figure the tradition must go back to the Great Depression or the Old Country, because my family still believes that the 24-hour convenience store and the local supermarket might vanish overnight, along with all essential food and supplies. They always seem slightly surprised to see the stores appear in the same place the next day.
The tradition continues whether we visit my family, actually, or if they visit us. The last time my great-aunt dropped by, she brought us a jar of spices with the label peeling off, and a blank videotape wrapped meticulously in a green napkin and topped with a bow.
“Be careful!” she warned. “The spices are imported from the East and are very rare.”
I smiled, knowing that “rare” meant “old” and “the East” meant the right side of her kitchen shelf. I also wondered if the tape was blank or a copy of a distant relative’s wedding.
When my mother stayed with us for a few days last month, she brought a dozen eggs, two pineapples and her own box of tissue. “Mom,” I tried to explain. “You don’t need to bring all this. There is a grocery store right around the corner.”
“But they don’t have fruit like this!” she proudly declared, waving the pineapple under my nose. “This is ripe!”
On the plus side, she left our house wearing my old high-school letter jacket, Aunt Mildred’s leather go-go boots (a previous gift) and a straw hat with “I like Ike” imprinted on the brim. My family is nothing if not practical.
I have a box in my garage where I keep my family’s gifts until I can recycle them to other relations or donate them to charity. Each year the box gets bigger.
“I’m on my way!” announced my great-aunt Sylvia, on the telephone one Saturday afternoon. “Do you need anything?”
“No.”
“A bunch of bananas?”
“No.”
“A stick of butter?”
“No, really.”
“How about Uncle Bob’s Army canteen?” She paused. “It’s been through three wars and doesn’t leak.”
“No!”
“What’s this?” my husband asked one day as he walked past the box of family gifts and pulled out a set of wooden chopsticks with an inscription and a pink tassel dangling from each end.
“Oh, that’s Aunt Cece’s souvenir of her visit to the Chinese restaurant in New Jersey where she sat next to a picture of the Great Wall.”
“What junk!” he declared. “Our house is beginning to look like the Salvation Army. Someone left a sofa on our front porch yesterday, and I thought your mom was visiting again. We really need to downsize.”
“I totally agree.” I said. “I know it’s strange, but it’s just their expression of love.”
My husband sighed. “Their love is cluttering up my garage. Just toss out a few things.”
I waited until he walked back into the house to begin my inventory. “Let’s see,” I mumbled, as I began to sift through the pile. “Our daughter leaves for college in about four years, and she might need the chrome umbrella stand and the cast iron squirrel nut crusher.” I tossed the items into the ‘save’ box. “And I wonder if that jar of low-fat apple butter will keep. …”
Debbie Farmer is a humorist and a mother holding down the fort in California, and the author of “Don’t Put Lipstick on the Cat.” You can reach her at
fa********@oa***************.com
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