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Finding the Valentine’s
Gift That Will Say the Right Thing
(By Stacy Jones, February 11, 2006) |
With
Valentine’s Day looming, everyone who has a sweetheart is
now scrambling to find just the right gift.
The old standards aren’t bad:
candy, roses, a nice card. However, some of us either don’t
like chocolate—including myself—or don’t need
the extra inches the calorie-laden candy will add to our waistlines.
Give chocolate and you say, “I love you, but only when you’re
fat.”
Roses are beautiful, but everyone
gives them. Well, maybe not everyone, but so very many do, which
makes them in some ways a thoughtless gift, too much of an old
standard. And, while their colors are beautiful on the day of
arrival and for a day or two thereafter, those colors fade. The
petals wilt. Give roses and you risk saying, “I love you,
but only in a fleeting way.”
Many people opt for cards. Cards
are a good idea in theory. They make the intangible tangible.
They express love on paper. For those who aren’t good putting
down how they feel about someone in words, it’s a good option.
However, finding the right one
can be difficult. So many of them are so sappy or bland or the
sentiment expressed on the card doesn’t exactly fit the
relationship of the possible giver and recipient. Give a card
and you risk saying, “I love you, but only in a sappy, saccharin
sort of way, not deeply.” Or, “I love you, but I’m
so inarticulate I couldn’t come up with the words to tell
you on my own.”
Others may opt for more unique
gifts that fail because they don’t express the right sentiment.
Practical gifts often fall into this category. I will never forget
one particular February when my husband and I were still dating,
and I mentioned that I needed a new hair dryer. Guess what I
got for Valentine’s Day? You got it: a gift that said, “I
love you, but I don’t want you to have to go outside in
the cold with a wet head again.” Pretty romantic stuff.
Other practical gifts for women
that often don’t make good gift ideas: ironing boards, vacuum
cleaners, toasters. Give these gifts, men, and you risk saying,
“I love you, June Cleaver. Let’s go back to the 1950s
before women were liberated and had a choice about being housewives
or not. Put on your apron and flit around the house fulfilling
my every need.”
So what makes a good gift? It depends.
My husband and I have stopped the
insanity of trying to buy tangible gifts for Valentine’s
Day. We have enough “stuff.” And when we want something,
we, like many people, just go ahead and buy it.
We have realized the gifts that
we will remember, that mean the most to us, are the things we
do together. This year, for Valentine’s Day, we’re
going to Tunica to see Willie Nelson in concert. We’ve seen
him before and really enjoyed, so we’re going back. And,
luckily, I was able early on to snag two second-row seats to
what is now a sold-out concert. We’ll likely go to dinner
and end up spending the night out as well.
But it will be unique. And fun.
And something we will remember, not just another gift we’ll
toss in a drawer and two years later wonder what the occasion
was for getting.
I think that’s the key: give
something unique that means something to the recipient. Of course,
this takes thought. It may take practice. It’s not always
easy. It becomes easier, however, for couples to give more meaningful
gifts as they get to know each other better and begin to grow
into each other.
It also may require giving something
a little out of the ordinary for the recipient, something she
doesn’t get every day—even if it is an old standard.
In one Valentine’s Day horror story, a woman writes, "I
thought my honey was going to bring me candies or at least a
card. To my horror he came over on my birthday and Valentine's
Day with a pack of cigarettes."
Now it seems as though the “honey”
would have gotten the idea on the woman’s birthday, but
not so. He repeated the fiasco on Valentine’s Day.
So, last of all, pay attention.
If your better half seems to fancy cigarettes, then, by all means,
go all out. Give her the gift that says, “I love you. And
some day won’t it be romantic if the two of us are lying
side by side in the hospital unable to breathe and dying for
another cigarette?”
But if not? Then you better find
what out she likes.
(Stacy Jones, a Southerner,
is a Master of Fine Arts student in fiction writing at The University
of Memphis. She is a native of Guys, Tenn., and her columns,
which appear on Saturdays, are archived at Southern-Drawl.com.) |
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