given

When my son was in a push chair we  took him to Crete

for holiday  where we had been before and Sonia Dioxinadis moved heaven, earth and chicken to turn up with a dozen  eggs overed with bits of grass and hay.  “From the farm” she said.  “Not the store !”  That’s a gift and don’t say  – but it’s only small.   Who’s measuring ?

I gave my mother her first cashmere one Christmas.  She muttered something  and took the dog out rather quickly.  I was a bit  dashed.  When she came back I was in the kitchen,  ministering to food, and she came and put her arms round me  from behind, whispering almost awed in my ear “I am wearing  cashmere – and my daughter gave it to me !”   Forget jewels.

There are people  who don’t know what to do, to respond to gifts.  They say thank you and the day  goes on.   There are people who don’t know how to give them or how to receive them.   Of course you can save up and buy a luxury, but it is often imagination – or even chance – that makes a gift. 

Last night was the end of an era. 

The Boys – three young men who came to lodge in James’s stepmother’s flat five years ago –  have moved on to the next stage – Harry to girlfriend, James to girlfriend and AJ staying with girlfriend.   I did not go and say a collective goodbye having said a quieter one to  both the men concerned.  And when I thank ked Harry for all their kindnesses and considerations, he said  “ But Anna, it’s mutual.   I never had a good neighbour before”   which meant so much to me, I  wrote it down.

(I have always written things down and sometimes even that doesn’t help me to negotiate self centredness and  Swiss Cheese Syndrome ie holes in  memory.) 

And today he topped it.  He arrived with a book and a card in which he has written all the nice things you might expect, having some social grace.  Though Harry is a velvet glove over a steel fist – I recognize it and I think it will serve him well.  We sat in the kitchen while he drank a glass of water and told me about his promotion.  All three of them lefthanded, he wrote his name and his new address in the book and I promised him a Christmas card.

So little is free nowadays that you can’t wonder at the success of a book about raising a leveret

by Albrecht Durer

and returning it to the wild (Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton), more goodwill than money, with more attention paid to the animal and its history, the weather and the vegetation than anything else.

Gathering  to moan about this or that may be a negative gift perhaps but a gift.  It’s free.   People say talk’s cheap  but if it makes you feel better, it’s beyond price and it’s not cheap in this house.

I prefer to call talk , exchange 

by Hedwig Oehring

because that’s the gift for me ie I tell you and you tell me  or the other way round.  Benign verbal tennis.   I don’t know why  the sound of the spoken voice became so important to me  – but I recognize where it falls short. There is a term in opera for a single singer half speaking, half singing over a narrow range of notes – recitative – and we have all been on the end of those.  Worse still, you can offer suggestions and advice which are shoved aside by the leviathan of lonely complaint.   Not everything can be fixed but quite a lot can be ameliorated.  Not interested.  Callers used to tell me their story over and over,  as if repetition would magically fix it. And it didn’t.  Thank heaven, not many of those.

There are gifts that come and go, and gifts that remain, tangible and intangible.  Gifts that smile or bring a smile to the face  unexpectedly.   Like the print of Victorian household  machines from a Mrs. Beeton book – she advised on all domestic arts as well as cookery – my son gave me when he was 12.  It has the air of beloved memory round it.  Given.