The Value of Gifts

 

My Mother's Day roses

 

The delivery man had the wrong address on his invoice, so he was calling my phone to see if I was home.  When he finally found me, he handed me a gorgeous rectangular glass vase filled with crimson roses with petals so deeply textured, they almost looked like velvet fakes.  The card was signed “Love, Me,” as they always are.  I was thrilled.

One of the perks of Mother’s Day I have come to treasure even more than this lovely gift is the assurance of a phone call from The Actor.  Never once has he failed to call if we happened to be in separate locations.  It has also become reasonable to expect the conversation will last longer than usual, which means we venture into many interesting pockets of conversational fodder.

Unless he’s George Clooney, Denzel Washington or William Shatner, an actor’s financial life is anything but predictable.  I’m pretty sure the concept of “feast or famine” was first used to describe the checkbook of someone bent on earning a living in front of the camera.

The Actor supplements his bank account between commercials, TV guest spots and movies by selling a premium hardwood flooring line to commercial developers, government building managers, and large retail store chains, among others.  He has been blessed with a gift of gab which, when combined with his aversion to the word “No,” landed him a contract with the developer of the ill-fated City Centre in Las Vegas before the bottom fell out of the economy.  The commission on that deal would put a sizeable cushion into his coffers and allow him to weather the dry spells between acting jobs for quite some time.

That was the plan.  The reality, no surprise to anyone who hasn’t been in a coma for the past two or three years, is that the City Centre developer is being sued by more sub-contractors than there are courtrooms in Vegas for non-payment.  The Actor’s commission has not been paid by his factory because the factory hasn’t been paid by the developer.  So, just like everybody else reading this post, he has had to budget his money and reign in his spending.

“Do you think it is easy for me to only send you flowers on Mother’s Day?  I hate that.  I want to do better than that.”  He said this in the middle of a rant about the state of the union.

This from the same guy who had sent me a text saying “You are not allowed to make me cry like that.  Great piece!” after he read my post on motherhood wherein I said my favorite gift of all-time from him was an hour-long drive in the Oakland (CA) hills! 


That’s when I realized, maybe for the first time, that gift-giving could very well be more about making the giver feel good than about pleasing the recipient.  My son, like many other men I’ve known, evaluates his expression of his love for me according to the cost of the gift.  How has he not noticed that I’ve kept every single thing he has ever made for me as a child?  Has he not noticed the framed crayon rubbing of an oak leaf he made in pre-school still standing displayed in the china cabinet?

I feel best about a gift when I have gone out of my way to match it to the wants and/or needs of the recipient.  My thought is that anybody can walk into a Rodeo Drive boutique in Beverly Hills and ask the salesperson which item is the “it” gift of the moment.  A sincere expression of love is far more intimate and personalized.

I love my roses and wish they would last just a little longer than they do.  But the greatest gift of all was the conversation.