Gifts that keep on giving

Recalling meaningful gifts of the heart

by

As the holidays ramp up so do our anxieties about gift-giving. When are we going to find time to shop? When are we going to rustle up the fortitude to fight crowds? What do our friends and family need? What do they want? Do they want anything?

It got us thinking about the whole process of gift-giving and the particularly memorable gifts we have each received over the years. We asked staff and readers for their stories. It turns out, from the many stories we collected, that the most meaningful gifts are often not material ones at all.

As I was thinking about the concept of gifts, and giving, it occurred to me that the best gifts are often unintentional — not given as gifts, but which become so over time. I feel lucky to have lived when friends still wrote letters to each other. Stuck a stamp on the envelope and mailed them. Post-college, my friends and I were avid letter writers — our output hardly rivalled, say, the six fat published volumes of Virginia Woolf’s letters, but we were a chatty bunch and in the way of people in their 20s, angst-ridden and apt to over-analyze every bit of everyday life. Today those letters are the best gift anyone could have given. A gift of the self, of thought, of questioning. These days, friends text — and there is something to be said for immediacy. But we gain that immediacy in exchange for reflection and amplification. In a yellow folder of letters I kept from that time, my friends leap off the page like characters in their own novels, full of life, exactly themselves. There’s no way an LOL can compete. #sad.

— Linda Falkenstein

My father didn’t know much about theater beyond the musicals and light comedies performed at the high school where he worked. I am certain he wasn’t thrilled when I announced that I had become a theater major, but that Christmas he gave me a three-volume set of the complete works of Eugene O’Neill, plays I had recently read. “He’s fine with this,” I thought. “I better do him proud.” Little did my dad know that O’Neill’s plays are populated by horrible fathers, every single one reminding me how lucky I was to have been raised by such a good man.

— Craig Johnson

My mom’s sister always gave me the greatest books for Christmas and birthdays when I was a kid. A school principal and librarian who lived in faraway Arizona, Aunt Hazel didn’t know my clothes sizes from year to year, or what music I was listening to, but she always found the perfect book to send — often autographed by the author. When I was in sixth grade my aunt for Christmas sent me a slim volume, a completely different kind of book — it was called “The Writer’s Journal.” With a marbled cover and quotes from famous authors sprinkled through the pages as footnotes, it was mine to fill with my own stories. I was so honored.

For months I would simply leaf through the (mostly blank) pages, reading the snippets from Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott and Shakespeare and many others, running my hands over the beautiful pages, and reveling in the awesome opportunity that the book offered me: to fill it with my own words. This was the first time anyone had ever called me a “writer.” The beautiful journal gave me both permission and authority to follow a path I coveted. I still have the book and I treasure it, even though it is still empty. I keep it to remind me of the writing I have yet to do.

— Gwendolyn Rice

Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. After a complete open hysterectomy including the removal of 29 lymph nodes, I got my pathology report, telling me that there was no further cancer found! I got a second chance to continue living! My personal motto now is “Some of the best gifts don’t come wrapped!”

— Shirley Hojnacki

I was not raised a religious Jew, though both of my parents grew up in observant households. My brother had a bar mitzvah; I did not. I attended Sunday school but then begged off continuing in Hebrew school because of rumors that the teacher was mean. My parents, unfortunately, let me drop out.

But we always identified ethnically as Jews and never missed honoring key holidays with family gatherings and traditional foods. I have continued that tradition, often hosting dinners at our house for family and close friends. I think I can say, with all due modesty, that I’ve perfected my mother’s chicken soup recipe over the years. But sometimes the holidays creep up on me. One year, on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, I had nothing planned. My partner, who is not Jewish, knew I was feeling forlorn about that.

While I went to temple, she made a beeline for Whole Foods where she bought challah, chicken soup and brisket. She also downloaded some prayers from the internet that were appropriate for the occasion. When I got back the table was set and food ready to serve. We shared the meal and stumbled through the prayers together, both relying on the phonetic spellings. It was a lovely — and very loving — way to start the New Year.

— Judith Davidoff

Some gifts you treasure the most are the things you never wanted. When I was a kid I always longed to go to amusement parks, but my dad had different ideas about fun. Starting when I was maybe 8 or 9, he would take me hunting for woodchuck, grouse, squirrel and deer. I wasn’t old enough to hunt myself, but I’d put on hand-me-down hunting clothes, bulky boots and a blaze orange vest and tag along. This mostly involved walking behind my dad and his brother for miles through thickets of painful briars on chilly fall days. I’d be lost in a daydream when suddenly I’d hear a fluttering of wings followed by thunderous shotgun blasts. Our English setter, Duke, would then lead the way to a dead grouse. I hated every moment of it and resented my dad for making me go.

When I was 12, I started hunting too, but having my own gun — and the power to kill — was even more dreadful. When I was 21 or so, I stopped going. A few years after that, I became a vegetarian. But here is what I now treasure: walking through the woods. And walking through cities. The ability to interact with the world, in what urban designers call a human scale, is something that I love and I know began on those crisp fall mornings when I was roused from bed too early and dragged into the woods.

— Joe Tarr

My Buck Knife 119. Deer hunting is a multi-generational tradition in my family. It’s much more than successfully harvesting an animal. It’s about the time spent with family and friends and the camaraderie shared among the group. The time I spend in the woods refreshes my soul and gives me an opportunity to reflect on how good my life really is. There are few things that top a still and silent morning in the woods. My Buck Knife 119 is a very special gift because it symbolizes everything that hunting is to me. My grandfather gave my dad his Buck Knife 119 when he was a boy; he’ll be 66 this year. He’s had that knife for over 50 years and taken it on every single hunt. I was given my Buck Knife 119 when I was about 13; I’m 31 today and my knife hasn’t missed a hunt. I hope I’m lucky enough to carry it for another 50 years. When my son is old enough I will give him a Buck Knife 119 and I hope he carries it for his lifetime.

— Zac Mulford

The most meaningful gift that I received was a chance to live without dialysis. A kidney from my cousin, Manny, was donated to me. My daughter wrote this after the surgery: “What is the most selfless, kind, loving thing one person can do for another? Literally give a part of themselves to someone so that they can live. That is what happened yesterday, Nov. 3, 2016, when Manny Figueroa donated his kidney to his cousin and our Mami, Mary ... Mami’s kidney disease kept her from working with her beloved kindergarteners and put her on the organ donation list in 2012. She has been on four-hour stints of dialysis, three times a week since May 2015, along with two hospital stays that summer.

Five relatives attempted kidney donation with no success. And then there was her match on the sixth try: Manny. When Mami said thank you to Manny today he said, ‘No, I’m thankful I could help you.’ When he started this process a year ago, he said that she was always taking care of other people and this was the least he could do for her. Those who know my mom know that’s true … There are NO WORDS to express what we feel for Manny… and the rest of his family for risking it all to allow their husband, son, brother, and Papi, to give us the ultimate gift.”

— Mary Reyes Perez

My college girlfriend once bought me a telescope and had another friend personalize it by hand painting favorite quotes from “The Little Prince” set off by tiny yellow stars. I’d always wanted, but never received, a telescope as a child. And then to use those quotes I loved showed me that my girlfriend really saw who I was. It changed the way I give presents to this day. I always try to demonstrate that I have seen and absorbed something unique in the person I’m giving the gift to; it’s never incidental. It’s an insight, a commemoration. The real gift then isn’t the object itself, but that someone out there truly knows who you are and loves you.

— Laura Jones

The best gift I ever got was a bike. A LeMond Etape, bought brand new at Johnny Sprockets in Chicago in 2005, when I was a freshman in college. I’d been getting into cycling that summer, borrowing my dad’s old bike to head out on longer and longer rides. Now I was moving to Chicago for college, and I needed a way to get around.

The deal was that I’d split the cost with my parents. My dad was a big cyclist back in the day — he lived in Santa Barbara, and he used to ride with the national team when they came to train. Not so much because he was as fast as those guys, but he was fast enough to hang, and he was funny. He worked in the bike shop at UC Santa Barbara, and cycling was the biggest part of his life. All of us kids had grown up on my dad’s stories about climbing Gibraltar Road, huffing and puffing while the Olympians cruised along trading fishing stories. About doing his first 100-mile century ride, so green to the sport that he wore jeans. One time he bought a bike at a garage sale in the middle of a 100-mile ride. He rode the new 3-speed bike home, with his Italian racing bike slung over his shoulder the whole way.

At Johnny Sprockets, we bought the bike and I handed my dad the cash to pay my portion. He held it in his hand for a second, looked at it, and handed it right back. Over that summer, cycling had become something we could share. It’s not like my dad and I didn’t connect or anything, we’ve always been very close. But I think he liked seeing me doing the same things he had done at my age — getting into something that was my very own, something that could expand my worldview.

Eventually that bike was damaged in shipping, but it was replaced by another. And as I got more and more into cycling, the stable grew. Now I have seven bikes, all for different things. Road bike, mountain bike, two cyclocross bikes, a commuter. I’ve raced around the country and landed in hospitals in three different states. I’ve spent horrifying amounts of money on bikes. I’ve been teased for shaving my legs for, what, a decade now? I’m covered in scars and one of my collarbones is more steel than bone. Cycling is a load-bearing part of my life and a central tenet of my personality. And I can’t imagine my life would be the same if my dad hadn’t given me this gift on a sunny day in Chicago.

— Sean Kennedy

I remember it as if it were yesterday. In the late ’70s, my family moved from town to take over running the farm (a longtime concern on my mother’s side). To give us something to do in an unfamiliar environment, my mom gave us a box of 45s collected during and just after her high school days. Perhaps making an even bigger impact were the two LPs she passed along: Four-year-old me received The Beatles’ Greatest, a German compilation from the mid-’60s, and my younger brother ended up with Abbey Road.

Recalling this today, I realize I have some questions about this memory: Is it real or reconstructed over the years from various happenings? I guess we must have already had the record player (a Fisher-Price plastic/indestructible unit) for playing book-and-record story sets. But I will need to ask if it was really the day we moved to the farm that we got the 45s, and if the Beatles albums happened at the same time.

Whether the memory is exactly right or not, the seed had been planted by this small batch of records, and I’ve been a total music fiend ever since. The Beatles were certainly the major impetus; we eventually ended up with most of mom’s Fab Four albums and the missing ones as gifts the next few years. She eventually got them back, but let’s just say they are no longer collector’s items.

It was the 45s which inspired the curiosity that keeps me digging through the record bins searching for unknown gems all these years later. They may have been largely hit singles — “You’re So Vain,” “Fire and Rain” and “I Am Woman” all come to mind — but this was still an era that included big hits by artists who had a lot less sustained success. “No Matter What” by Badfinger remains one of my favorite songs, and one I’ve ended up playing in a band. One-off gems such as “Stuck in the Middle With You” (Stealers Wheel) and “Back When My Hair Was Short” (Gunhill Road) also were part of the stash. And of course, some late Beatles, including otherwise hard to find flip sides such as “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number),” a bizarre number perfectly designed for kid brains.

It’s perhaps too great a burden for most gifts to be life-altering, but for me that really was the case.

— Bob Koch

I was in my mid-20s, and I had a history degree from UW-Madison, a little bit of theater and journalism experience and I was bursting with undisciplined ambition in many directions. I met Andrew doing a musical at Broom Street Theater and not long after, we were married and packing our young golden retriever into the VW Golf for a move to Park Slope, Brooklyn.

We were going to be artists — in New York City. The transition was rough. Mostly, I rode the subway and worked on exercises from The Artist’s Way. I spent months searching for jobs and getting rejected. I signed up with a temp agency, and did mind-numbing data entry, ironing and receptionist work. Having grown up in a small town, I always wanted to be anonymous. Now I was learning the meaning of the phrase “be careful what you wish for.” I was scolded for reading The New Yorker at my data entry job, yelled at by an angry executive for failing to transfer an important call, and appeared day after day at jobs where no one knew my name — or sometimes what I was supposed to do.

I got a great amount of pleasure from reading a ‘zine called Temp Slave that documented true stories from jobs much worse than those I was in. We stuck it out for a year and a half before a friend in Madison called and said there was an apartment in her building overlooking Lake Monona for $430 a month. We wanted to come home. After our struggle to be noticed, Madison’s community of artists and musicians was looking better than ever. And even if we wouldn’t be making a living doing art, we’d have time and energy left to create. That offer of a cheap, beautiful apartment was a gift. So was a conversation with Marcy Weiland, a friend from Broom Street who had become the artistic director of Mercury Players Theatre. I mentioned that we could probably write a musical called Temp Slave, and that we’d played around with it and written a possible scene. “We’ll give you a slot in December,” she said. This was an absolute leap of faith. She’d seen us both act and sing, and she knew Andrew could write songs. But to offer us a production for a full-length musical, sight unseen, well, that’s the rare gift every aspiring artist needs.

— Catherine Capellaro

My brother Fernando loves to dance. Even though he cannot move with his feet, he moves his arms and upper body. He is a smart, bilingual six-year-old who likes to talk about what he did in school, what he watched on his tablet, and especially the foods he wants to try. But we don’t know how long he will be able to talk or eat or dance.

Fernando has spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a disease that affects the motor nerve cells in the spinal cord. It means he cannot produce muscle, and the disease is slowly taking away his ability to walk, talk and breathe. Living with this condition is extremely challenging for Fernando and our whole family because it’s hard to watch someone you love deeply struggle with a disease that can not be fixed or changed.

But this challenge has also been a great gift. My brother completely changed my world. He has helped me see different perspectives about people with disabilities. People assume people with physical disabilities aren’t mentally capable or strong. But my brother is the definition of strong. He works hard and pushes his boundaries. When he was younger we would go to muscle therapy and he would play with blocks and toys. He thought this was just a play room, but he was getting observed by doctors and medical personnel who were studying his disease. They would make a big tower of blocks and watch him try to reach the last block, all the way on the top. But he could never reach it. One day, he destroyed the tower and made his own. He put the last block on the top of the little tower he made, looked at me and started laughing. He made his own success.

Watching my little brother struggle with day-to-day activities has taught me that I should rise to the challenges in my own life. I learned that I took my education for granted. My parents immigrated here from Argentina and Paraguay, and never attended college. And I was angry at the world because society treated immigrants so unfairly. I was confused about why my hardworking mom and dad weren’t prospering in the United States like the parents of my white, middle-class classmates. Watching Fernando succeed on his own terms motivates me. I want to prove wrong the people who laughed at me when I told them I was going to college. In the same way that Fernando is proving the doctors wrong. They said he would lose all muscle function by the age of 5. This little human being, my brother, someone who thinks Minecraft is the most important thing in the world, lit a flame of hope and self love inside of me.

— Fernanda Torales

Every Thanksgiving morning for 14 years, former Wisconsin Public Radio host Joy Cardin invited listeners to share meaningful gift stories. It was a beloved tradition that Cardin inherited from her morning show predecessor Tom Clark. Regular guest Connie Kilmark, a financial consultant, would join Clark (and then Cardin) during the annual show.

“Tom and Connie started doing the show because of all the Black Friday consumerism and people spending too much during the holidays on stuff, on gifts that weren’t meaningful,” Cardin says. “The [phone] lines were always packed with people who wanted to share. Every year we’d have a few tear-jerkers…. As listeners revealed again and again, the best gifts aren’t purchased at the mall or during some sort of shopping frenzy.”

Cardin retired this September after three decades at Wisconsin Public Radio. This will be the first Thanksgiving in many moons that the veteran broadcaster won’t be on the air. The decision to hang up her headphones came about in June while Cardin was on a yoga retreat in Bali with her husband Rob Starbuck — WISC-TV’s former morning news anchor.

“Rob and I share a passion for travel and yoga. So, we did a half-day at the retreat and the next day I sprained my ankle,” Cardin recalls. “It wasn’t super severe but it was enough that I was limping around and couldn’t do everything I wanted to do. But it gave me time to reflect. Time to meditate. It gave me a chance to clear my mind and consider what is important in life.”

While Cardin was bummed about spraining her ankle and it limited her activities at the retreat, she now considers the injury the spark that launched her into a new chapter of her life.

“It was because I hurt my ankle that I realized life was short. It was also the moment that I made the decision to retire. It wasn’t long after we got back that I notified Wisconsin Public Radio,” Cardin says. “I wanted to spend more time with Rob. Travel more. Just live life to the fullest while I can. So, to me, spraining my ankle turned out to be a very meaningful gift.”

And Wisconsin Public Radio’s meaningful gift show will live on. Cardin’s interim replacement Kate Archer Kent will keep the tradition going on this Thanksgiving morning at 8.

“I do miss keeping people company every morning and the loyalty listeners showed to me for so many years,” Cardin says. “But retirement is a gift, too, and I’m very fortunate to be in a position to make that decision. I feel very blessed and lucky.”

— Dylan Brogan