The perfect gift

I opened the box, pulled back the tissue paper, and stood there, staring down at the gift. I couldn’t speak. My mouth moved, but nothing came out. My fiancé, who I would marry later that year, looked back at me. She was so excited to give me the Valentine’s Day present that she giggled with excitement.

We had been out a few weeks earlier and I had mentioned in passing that I liked a brown leather bomber jacket that I saw in a store window. We were young and didn’t have a ton of money. We were trying to save money for our wedding. Everything that we saved outside of regular bills went toward the wedding and starting our life together.

My comment about the jacket was a throw-away comment. I had just mentioned that the rich kid in my dorm in college had a leather jacket just like it and I had always liked the look and feel. I added that one day, when I was more established, when money wasn’t quite an issue, I hoped to get a real leather one for myself. I never thought anything would come of my comment.

And now a brown leather jacket just like I had described was in my hands. It felt like a dream.

A big gift

The jacket has long ranked high on my list of favorite gifts. I think in large part because it caught me off guard. I didn’t have any ideas that it was coming. I wore the jacket for the next twenty years well past normal wear and tear. I hated to give it up — the jacket meant so much to me — but time finally caught up to it and me.

I’ve been thinking recently about some of the best presents that I’ve ever given and received in my life because July 4 marks the 140th anniversary of France gifting the Statue of Liberty to the United States.

France and a slew of benefactors presented the Statue of Liberty to the U.S. Ambassador as a symbol of freedom and democracy on July 4, 1884 in Paris, France to commemorate the alliance between the two countries during the American Revolution. French intellectual and anti-slavery activist Édouard de Laboulaye hoped the statue would inspire the French people to call for democracy in the face of a repressive monarchy.

The statue was built in France between 1875 and 1884 by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, with the help of engineer Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel. The statue was disassembled and shipped via the French Navy ship, Isère to the U.S, arriving in New York in June 1885. The pedestal for the Statue was not yet complete, so it remained in pieces on Bedloe’s Island until it was reassembled and officially unveiled in October 1886. 

Now that’s a gift!

Personal gifts

I was touched by the leather jacket. I learned that the best gifts catch the other person by surprise, have a personal and meaningful connection, and shows that you listen, know, and care deeply for the other person.

When I asked my wife about the best gifts I’ve ever given her in our thirty years together, I was amazed how quickly she recited the list. I would’ve had to hem and haw and think for a few minutes. My wife, though, didn’t need to think twice about the question and included both big and small things.

She pointed first to our three children, all grown now; my surprise wedding proposal; a trip out to California to see our son that we took a few years ago; and a small gold apple that I gave her when we were first dating. The apple was a small thing, but she’s a teacher and has always loved apples. The thing that made it special is that I showed her that I got what made her tick.

What’s the best gift you’ve ever given or received? What it made it so?

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“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

—From the poem inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty, New Colussus by Emma Lazarus