A Good Gift

In German , the word Gift means poison.

Photo by Annie Spratt

Gift-giving carries a particular flavor of despair for me. It’s an off-putting brew of longing and shame and incompetence; a resigned, preemptive regret. Something behind my belly-button clenches as I think of it.

I remember the curdling, prolonged agony of one Christmas in my youth as I wandered the labyrinthine shops of the Newgate Mall two days before Christmas. I felt mocked by the blaring joy of the holiday tunes endlessly looping over the speakers, ashamed by the scant amount of money at my disposal and the vast number of people I loved, taunted by the ticking clock, and forlorn at an absolute dearth of ideas. It was all scarcity, financial and temporal. Scarcity of insight, scarcity of capacity, scarcity of spirit.

All leading, of course, to the deep and public humiliation of a gift unwrapped, a moment’s pause, and a feigned expression of appreciation for the aftershave bottle exactly like the three months’ worth my dad already has in storage. For a paltry…