When we were children my brother Robin and I had been astonished by our father's indifference to gifts. What meant so much to us, as children, meant literally nothing to him; Christmas and birthday presents for our father had to be opened by others (that is, by us} since Daddy thought so little of the ritual.
"Look, Daddy! This is for you" -- my brother and I would plead with our father, who might be reading the newspaper, or involved in one or another household chore, and would barely glance at us.
We'd thought our father so strange, not to care -- not to care about a present.
For children, even for teenagers, nothing seems quite so exciting as a wrapped present. For days beforehand my brother and I would speculate on the contents of packages beneath our Christmas tree, though our past experiences must surely have curbed our imaginations. But there was our father as indifferent to the excitement of gift-giving as he was to the gifts themselves {invariably shirts, neckties, socks}.
Of all writers it is Henry David Thoreau who most speaks to my father's temperament -- Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
And -- Simplify, simplify, simplify.
From my father I have inherited my ambivalence about gift-giving. I understand that it is an ancient and revered social ritual and that, in human relations, it is, or should be, a genuine expression of love, affection, admiration, respect; yet, through my life I have rarely felt more anxiety than I feel at the prospect of giving a gift. For how grateful one must be, for a present which {probably} isn't at all needed, or wanted; how can one reciprocate a gift, without making a social or personal blunder? Will my gift be wildly inappropriate, too costly/not costly enough? That gift-giving is so crucial to our society, the very wheel driving the capitalist-consumer economy, seems to me, as it seems to my father, unfortunate; the juggernaut of Christmas rolling around each year, overshadowing much else, invariably a season of apprehension and disappointment for many, seems particularly unfortunate. The very nicest "gifts" are those given spontaneously, without ritual or custom tied to a calendar, and those one can truly prize' the others, duly wrapped in expensive paper, part of a seasonal barrage of gifts, are likely to be dubious.
The gifts which I give to my parents now are more meaningful to Daddy than the perfunctory gifts of long ago -- these are books, records, subscriptions to magazines (Atlantic, Harper's, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, Paris Review in which from time to time work of mine might appear}; of course I've given my parents copies of each of my books, of which several have been dedicated to them. {Daddy has joked that he's had to build a special bookcase in their living room, to accommodate my books.} They have an ongoing subscription to Ontario Review.
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