Gifts for Dad
Father’s Day is quickly approaching. Time to think of a gift for dad. No ideas? We all know that feeling. Gift-giving is tricky at best. At worst, it’s harder than solving a Rubik’s Cube. If it’s a gift exchange for someone at work, you can just get one of those big tins of flavored popcorn, slap a bow on it, and hand it over. If, on the other hand, it’s a gift for one of those “hard to buy for” types, like your parents, that’s another thing altogether.
When it came to gifts for my mother, I always drew a blank, so I finally gave up and started sending her flower arrangements. My father presented a much bigger problem. I never had any good ideas for him. I once told him that he was hard to buy for, and he said, “I know. If I want something I just go and get it.” That’s true, and he was a man of very simple needs – three decent meals a day, a TV, and a functioning lawnmower. What do you give someone like that? I once gave him a bottle of supposedly wonderful smelling aftershave. He thanked me, and then opened a gift from another one of his children. It was the same thing. Another time I gave him a wallet which I later found out he secretly exchanged for a belt. And then there was the time I gave him a book which apparently put him to sleep whenever he opened it. I couldn’t win until maybe his very last Christmas when he was elderly and infirmed and only had about a month to live. I didn’t bother to get him anything that year. I just took a day to sit by his bed and hang out with him. We talked and watched TV until he eventually fell asleep. He may have appreciated that more than any of the gifts I ever gave him.
The message here is simple. Maybe we make too much of this gift-giving thing. We all want to do something nice for our loved ones, and we do the best we can, but sometimes our efforts fall short. So if you should someday happen to find yourself unwrapping a gift you don’t quite know what to do with, just remember – sometimes it really, truly, honestly is the thought that counts. I think dads know this.