It’s hard for me to admit this, but somewhere between the time my brother used a permanent marker to draw a mustache on his sweet sleeping sibling (me) and now, Kurt has become sort of wise.

Truth be told, I never would’ve expected to use the word “wise” together with “Kurt” unless another three-letter-word tagged along. (And I don’t mean “guy.”)

Kurt has always been the typically tormenting big brother. With his assistance, I learned of under-the-bed monsters and gained experience in the world of wedgies and Indian burns. Kurt taught me the wisdom to be had in carefully checking a phone before pressing one to my head (this he accomplished by randomly filling my earpiece with Vaseline), and not to freak over what appears to be a disgusting substance on a bathroom doorknob. If the prankster’s been by, it’s most likely chunky peanut butter.

So basically, I guess I should be accustomed to being surprised by my brother, and this latest is just more of the same. Yet it’s not.

Considering that our Year of Financial Disaster became plural (both first word and last), I sent Kurt an email to ask if he was OK with us not exchanging gifts this Christmas. He answered that it was totally fine with him.

I suppose I should interject for a moment to mention that one of my peeves is how sparing my brother is with written words. He generally treats sentences as if he’s being charged for each word. I anticipated no more from him than “OK.”

Instead, he wrote about how, in years past, he would ask our dad what he wanted for Christmas, and Dad would always say he didn’t want anything at all.

“If I bought him something a little on the expensive side,” Kurt wrote, “he’d seem distraught and almost annoyed by the present. Several times it made me kind of scratch my head as to why he was acting this way, but I think I now understand.”

It turns out that Tori, Kurt’s 20-year-old daughter, had just sent him an email asking what he wanted for Christmas.

“It deeply touched me, and at the same time, it burdened my heart. I see how hard she works for what little she makes. I know her financial burdens with the car, the horse she rescued, medical bills, rent, a school loan, etc. But even with all that, she still wanted to share some of what little she has left to give me a present.”

Kurt’s an engineer, so if he wants or needs something, he can usually afford to buy it.

“Tori knows this,” wrote my brother, “but still wants to give me something. How do you accept a gift from your child? In one sense, I feel guilty because she can’t really afford it, but at the same time, I feel honored. Whatever she decides to give me, I’ll truly cherish it. The intent from the heart of the giver is the true gift, and the present is just part of the packaging.”

My own daughter is still young enough that the money she spends for our gifts usually comes from our wallet, so Kurt’s revelation had not occurred to me. In retrospect, it seems obvious now. Dad being uncomfortable with presents had nothing to do with what we selected, but in him not wanting us to be burdened with spending what we worked hard to earn on something for him.

(For the record, Mom seems as uneasy about gifts as Dad, but she’s generally such a bubbly person that it isn’t as noticeable.)

And so the dilemma of the gift-seeking child — to find something special enough that it conveys affection, yet inexpensive enough not to cause parental discomfort.

For years I’ve sort of prided myself on being a careful selector of gifts. I want my recipients to be able to see that much thought went into what they were given so they’d know how much they meant to me.

And now that I better understand the reasoning behind my parents’ discomfort, I feel challenged to find something that doesn’t — as my brother put it — burden their heart.

I need to trust it’s not how good the gift is that matters. And trust, too, that my recipient knows how good the giver wants it to be.

 

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