The Gift That Keeps On Giving

So Amazon now has a policy wherein if someone sends you a present via Amazon, you can be forewarned and allowed to either accept the gift - - or allowed to change the gift, secretly, of course, along with sending the giver a thank you note that sounds as if you received the original gift and no one is the wiser.

Yuck. Ick.

Gee, I guess it really IS the thought that counts. Or the lie that counts. or......what IS it that counts? What (listen to the older generation blather on!) kind of people are we raising here? But that's not true, I know lots of younger people who would find Amazon's newest gimmick as abysmally awful as I do. Not that I'm the Poster Child of present giving. I've given my share of ....what are they called? Second-hand gifts? Gifts that had already been given away once.....by someone else....to me. But said gifts tend to be fairly fabulous gifts, given only because someone else collects them and I don't. Something like that. In my once-upon-a-time-really-really-skinny-days I was once given five or six gowns which had been owned by the actress Frances Farmer. They arrived at my home in a box wrapped in gold foil with a huge red velvet ribbon tied round and round into a huge bow on top. Each gown was slinkier and hip-bone-showier than the next. I chose one of the gowns, re-wrapped it and gave it to a similarly bodied friend. THAT kind of gift. Anybody wanna say "No" to that kind of gift? Not on your life.

Today I've heard what six individuals received for Christmas; from French silk scarves attached to airplane tickets to Paris, France - - to ten coupons for ten different kinds of kisses. I'm not much of a traveler. I'll take the kisses. Although on the other hand .....

I'm glad to know that gift giving is not the dinosaurish-activity I had feared it was. I used to hear so much of, "Oh, George and I don't bother with presents anymore, we have everything we want." Really? You have everything you want? I'll never be that person. I know it's unchic as hell of me, unchic and out of style and out of step and oh-so-ugly-American, but I don't think I'll ever get over my lust for silver jewelry or books or cd's or dvd's or blank journals or bracelets or necklaces or anything I deem as beautiful or magical or sparkly or glowy or wonderful. I loved the moment when, the day AFTER Christmas, Alan looked at me and said, "I wanted to wait till tonight but I just can't wait any longer, put out your hand," and he rummaged through his backpack until he pulled out a green package and plunked it into my proffered right hand, whereupon I hurriedly (I'm always in a hurry when it comes to unwrapping presents) tore off the wrapping paper and discovered the most fabulous pair of earrings - earrings for a gypsy queen, for an Spanish gypsy queen, for an ethnically beautiful (inside joke) Spanish gypsy queen with a sense of humor and good strong ears although the earrings are light as a dove's wing. Earrings beautiful enough to speed up one's heart rate, if for no other reason than one is racing to the nearest mirror to see how they look. Even though I am not especially adventurous, they make me LOOK adventurous, and that's good enough for me.

However, I am not altogether "thing-oriented" -- I am well aware that gifts come in all sizes and all sorts of transformations and transfigurations and that most often, the very best gifts do not come in any state of being wrapped or having ever been wrapped. No bows, no ribbons, no frills, just a state of being, often fleeting, like a grin or a giggle or a smile where, only moments earlier, a frown had existed in its stead.

Alan and I are, of course, in the magnificent process of learning each other. Really, there is nothing better, nothing more fascinating, nothing more curious or delicious or exultant or maddening or heavenly than to learn another human being....especially a human being of the opposite sex. It is a Shakespearean experience, worthy of William Himself. It is huge, like a Tsunami. It is epic, like Tolstoy. It is vastly entertaining. It is multi-layered and multi-fascited, causing the writer to misspell several words in a row. My computer is underlining all my "Multi" words with little red wavy lines and yet I proceed, because I still have three patients to go and I refuse to stop for spelling. I am not writing for my English professor, even though I know that some of you out there ARE or have been English professors. Bite me.

The other night Alan and I disagreed on what movie to rent...he didn't want to watch the movie I wanted to see and I, who am used to getting my way when it comes to such matters, was.....flustered and flabbergasted. I didn't back down. He didn't back down. I couldn't believe he wasn't backing down. One of the most difficult perceptual problems people have is to realize that others (most typically, one's own mate) do not share their own personal psychological perceptions. Jim and I agreed on movies. It was not that I "got my own way"....it was that "we" were in agreement about ALMOST all films. And, to be fair, as Alan points out, we agree upon lots and lots of movies.....but not all. And it is in this "but not all" space, this rare "new" space where I experience such a lacuna of.....shock and utter disbelief......oh, why is he making trouble, anyway? Why not just go along with me? Wouldn't it just be easier to acquiesce? Why not make nice? I mean, oh my God, how can he live with himself,.... there I am, with the CD in my hand, and there he is, going on and on about, "Movies with lots of guns, or movies about the end of the world or movies about car crashes, those are movies that are, by and large, about making money. Period. And I'm not buying into it. Sure, I loved PULP FICTION, there are some great movies out there with guns and violence and I love some of them, but I'm not going to love them just because the owner of some video store tells me they're great. You're asking me to spend two and a half hours of my life watching something that looks like it's about a bunch of morons with guns in their hands? I don't think so."

Really?
Really.

So I leave the video store and go to Safeway because we've decided to make a chicken salad for dinner. And suddenly there he is, in Safeway, in the vegetable aisle, because we've decided to make a chicken salad for dinner. And I've been a psychotherapist for twenty-seven years. And I've got a good reputation, pretty good, at least, for being a pretty good couple's therapist. And I don't know where to look.

I'll be damned if I'm going to look at him.
I'm not going to look at him.
No way.
Uh-uh.
Nope.

But I suddenly feel a giggle erupt in side of me, like a burp.
I want to burp, but it's a giggle.
I want to slap myself, because I want to giggle, only it's a laugh.
I want to laugh.

I look at him and his lips are trembling, like he's trying hard not to laugh. We are both trying hard not to laugh. We are standing, two adults, next to all kinds of lettuce, this kind and that kind, I can't even tell you all the kinds of lettuce we are standing next to, soft kinds and hard kinds, not to mention spinach, and suddenly we both let it happen, we both let our lips sway into smiles and then tighter into grins and then into laughter and then we are hugging and then it's okay, it's okay, and we walk to the video part of Safeway and we rent a movie called THE LAST STATION with Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer about Tolstoy and his wife Sophie, which I had seen, but I didn't tell Alan that until later because I wanted him to see it and he wanted to see it and I didn't yet know how delicate or how strong we were in the "I've seen it and you haven't" department category.........and we went home and fixed a delicious chicken salad and watched this deliciously marvelous (sad, sad) movie and then we watched one of Woody Allen's early hilarious movies, LOVE AND DEATH, and that was it. The gift was huge and it was in there somewhere. Where was it?

It was the smile and then the grin and then the laughter in the lettuce aisle at Safeway. As gorgeous as those earrings are, as gorgeous as all the gifts we gave each other, and we gave each other plenty, it was the smile and the grin and the laughter in the Safeway vegetable aisle that I will always remember. I placed the memory in my psychological and physical world of fundamental forces where it will always remain and help steady me when I am in trouble with myself or with Alan and I need a posse of psychological muscles to assist me in motation. Even if, as my computer is now telling me, I can not spell "motation".

And now my computer is informing me that I don't have any more blog space. Well, great. I need to go now, anyway. I just wanted to talk for awhile about gifts. So far this year, my best gift has been.....you guessed it...other than my kids and my grandkids and my friends....it's been Alan. He's become my best friend as well as my lover as well as my fiance. We've even spoken about marriage. While in Port Townsend we've even found me an engagement ring. And here is my conclusion to this raggedy blog - when (if) you marry your best friend, the talk (and nothing else, either) never grows old. It can't. It doesn't know how. The world becomes too fertile. The small world you two inhabit, your immediate intimate world, your neighborhood or neighborhoods, your country, your world....the world of art, of poetry, of literature, of music, of sensuality, of cuisine, of children, of grandchildren, of friends, of dreams, of life stories, of hopes, of dreams, of dashed hopes, of dashed dreams, of saviors, your own personal history, your parents' histories, your peoples' histories, your wishes, your fears, your successes, your failures, your personal saints and angels, the ones in your life you have blessed and wish to continue to bless, the ones in your life you have damned and wish to continue to damn or wish to forgive or wish to bash their heads in or wish to....or wish to.....or wish to......as long as you still wish to.........amen.....amen....amen......amen.....amen........it is all having to do with the gifts that keep on/giving.