The Gift

We've made pretty good progress since moving into our new house, especially considering we added a whole new human being to the mix shortly after getting the keys. For a while, I was in an unpacking frenzy. I tore through box after box, and was really good about putting things away. However, there was one box, from the collection of boxes stored in my parents' basement, that somehow slipped through the cracks. I set it aside and kept telling myself, "I'll get to it tomorrow." There was no real reason I was avoiding it; I think I was just honestly over the whole unpacking thing, and I knew the box didn't contain anything we absolutely needed in order to survive, so there it sat, in our garage for the better part of four months.

When I finally got around to unpacking it one night in a rare and sudden burst of energy, I saw it contained the boring stuff I expected--a printer we don't really use, a couple throw pillows we don't need anymore, a few holiday odds and ends. As I got to the bottom of the box though, I saw something I had sort of forgotten about--a Christmas gift from Tom to me from about three Christmases ago. It was a cheap vase, filled with those little glass gems you get from the craft store. Sticking up out of the vase were cheap fake flowers and among the fake flowers were photos, glued onto colored paper and mounted onto thin dowel rods, spray painted green. A "photo bouquet," if you will. I smiled at the photos--one of Libby as a baby, one of Tom and I with Mike and Renee, one of Tom and I pre-kids, a group shot from the Thanksgiving we hosted in North Carolina. The memories attached to the photos were of course nice, but I really couldn't think of anywhere in our house to put the vase. And if I'm being honest, its certainly no decorator item. I turned to Tom and said, "Would you be really upset if I threw this out?" "No," he responded. I started to set it in the trash pile and suddenly something stopped me. I looked back at Tom and he said, "Maybe you should keep it." "I was thinking the same thing," I said.

You see, the Christmas that I got that vase was a tough Christmas. I had been a stay at home mom for almost one full year and we were living on Tom's meager teacher's salary, with me babysitting full time and tutoring part time to contribute financially. Even with Tom coaching two sports and working at a marina over the summer, we were barely getting by. Sure, we had a nice home and drove two reliable cars and could afford the necessities in life, but it was tight. Really tight. Every month when I sat down to review our budget, I'd wonder how we were going to make it work. Thankfully, Tom and I were both raised in families who taught us financial responsibility, so we never got behind on bills or racked up credit card debt, but when it came time to buy Libby new clothes or to travel to Ohio for the holidays, we would have to figure out where the money for that was going to come from. It was insanely stressful.

So that Christmas, Tom and I made a decision to not buy for each other. We had Libby to buy for, after all, and while we could think of a million things we would like to have for ourselves (since we never treated ourselves to anything), it wasn't about us. Gift-giving is one of my love languages, so I'll admit that it was tough for me to not buy for Tom and to reconcile the idea that he wouldn't be getting anything for me, but I knew it was for the best.

We decided to do a small family gift exchange in North Carolina before heading to Ohio for the holidays. We wanted to quietly give Libby a gift or two without all the commotion of a thousand people around. After Libby opened her gift, Tom handed me a bag with tissue paper sticking out. I was confused and was already trying to figure out how he pulled off getting me an actual tangible gift without spending any money. When I opened the bag, I started laughing at first. Then, as I looked at that cheap vase, those even cheaper flowers and the photos, I started to cry. I realized that my husband, who has not a single crafty bone in his body, had not only gone to a dreaded craft store to purchase the supplies to make this gift, but had also painstakingly spray painted the small wooden dowels, used his precious planning time at school to cut flower shapes from paper on the Ellison machine and had gotten pictures printed and then cut them into fun shapes with my craft scissors. Suddenly, that bouquet became the most beautiful bouquet I had ever seen. I cried because I was so grateful for him and I cried because in the midst of having very little, I realized I had so much.

Its three years later and our lives have changed. Not totally, but enough. Our move to Ohio meant that Tom got to make more money as a teacher, and now we don't have to panic every time an unexpected expense comes up. Don't get me wrong--we are by no means living a life of luxury, but we finally have a little breathing room. Before I unpacked that final box the other night, I was ready to close the chapter on those North Carolina years. But those years made us who we are as a family. It made us stronger, it made us more grateful and it made us realize what things are really important to us. We've learned that we don't need much to be happy. We've learned to be frugal to a fault sometimes. We've learned to do more with less. I'm proud of us, not only for weathering those tough years in North Carolina, but for our ability to see beyond "stuff" in life. Let's face it, Tom and I are both teachers--we will never have the biggest house or fancy designer label clothes or take exotic vacations. But I can honestly say that we are so okay with that. We feel richest when we're spending a Saturday at the zoo together, or cheering on Tom's players at a Friday night football game, or curling up on the couch for a family movie night. I hope that we raise our girls to value much more than clothes and nice cars and brand names, because those are not the things that memories and families are made of.

That vase sits on my dresser now, a constant reminder of where we've come from and who we are.