The Precious Present By Lavinia Plonka “We almost never think of the present, and when we do, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future.” Pascal
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any years ago, I passed a New Age gift store with a sign outside proclaiming, “Remember the precious present,” cleverly being pithy and exhorting me to buy at the same time. I would drive by it and mutter, “Commercialism, blah, blah, exploiting new age psycho babble for blatant consumerism, blah blah, useless chatchkes to clutter up our already cluttered lives blah blah.” Not once did I actually remember to be in “the precious present.” I was always so obsessed with my self righteous pontification that the present came and went and became the future and I missed the whole thing. For years I wrestled with the meaning of giving and receiv-
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thesofiamagazine.com | December 2020
ing gifts. For a few years, as my sisters skyrocketed to financial prosperity, a “can you top this?” enterprise emerged, with everyone in the family insanely buying absurdly expensive gifts for each other. It peaked the year my sister bought me a new electric range, because she “couldn’t bear us suffering with that old thing anymore.” A range? For Christmas? What was next? A car? Not that I wasn’t grateful mind you. I did need a new range. It’s just that I was kind of expecting ….a sweater. Or maybe a new wok. The stove sent our family into a frenzy that finally ended when we realized it took a year to pay off the Christmas gifts.
satisfied, since the gift was on the list.” I would receive these lists: Liz: A new scuba watch, Le Creuset cookware, an underwater strobe, a Kitchen Aid mixer, an HDTV, new socks. Krysia: A new Ipod, Czech crystal jewelry, Size 9 Pumas, the entire works of Joseph Campbell, a Bose stereo system, and some Gap T shirts. How could I get Liz socks when I knew in her heart of hearts she wanted a scuba watch? (Good to 300 feet of course.) I fantasized that she threw in the HDTV as a joke. Only later did I discover that she had harbored a secret hope that the entire family would chip in to get her the “one big gift.”
At that point, my sister agreed, “You’re right. Let’s make lists so that we can buy what is in each sibling’s price range. That way, no one ever wastes shopping time, and the receiver is always
One year I tried homemade gifts. The sight of me cursing as I sewed satin purple ribbon to a sleep pillow stuffed with lavender, or cursing as I cut myself with the mat knife struggling
