Gifting It Forward

“Do you know anyone who needs a coat?” my mother asked as she lifted the plastic bag to reveal her 20 year old green car coat.

“Why don’t you just put it in the Good Will clothing drop?” I asked, but I knew that would never happen. That would be the equivalent of telling her to throw the coat away. My mother doesn’t throw her things away, she bequeaths them to others.

“Ask Liz if she wants it. I’ll be on death’s door before I can fit into this coat again,” she said. “I love this coat and I want someone I know to have it.” I took the coat and she handed me another bag with two sweaters in it. “Give her these, too. What a shame, such beautiful sweaters, but they don’t fit anymore.”

It wouldn’t be so bad if my mother just gave her things away and forgot about them, but she can’t let go of the bond she forms with her things. Her attachment is very personal. She wants to know how her relinquished items are doing, long after she gives them away.

When my dad purchased a new player piano he gave me their 20 year old piano that he had promised me several years earlier. Then we acquired the 25 year old couch when they bought a new one, and later we got their 30 year old dining room set. We kept the couch for about five years then decided to put it out for trash. We had to make room for the love seat that – you guessed it – my mother was getting rid of and offering to us.

“You can’t put that couch on the curb!” my mother exclaimed, “That’s a perfectly good couch. Ask around; I’m sure you can find someone who needs a good couch.” When we finally found a relative who needed a couch, my mother was thrilled. A few weeks later, at mom's Sunday dinner table, my brother told the funny story about the couch cushion that flew off while his brother-in-law was transporting it at 60 mph on the Long Island Expressway. As we were all laughing it up, I turned and saw the sad tragic look on my mother’s face. “It’s no use,” she said, “when it comes too easy, you don’t appreciate it.”

Ten years later, when I purchased a new dining room set, I gave the old table back to her because I couldn’t find anyone to pass it on to. The table is still in her basement. It is scratched and warped, but mom hasn’t given up on gifting it forward. “Someone your father knows came to look at the table and they said they wanted it,” she told me recently, “but they never came back to pick it up. What a shame; such a nice table. You can put it on the curb some day when we're gone and you sell the house."

Being a member of the Greatest Generation and a survivor of the Great Depression, I can understand my mother’s frugality and prudence. Money didn’t come easy when she was growing up, starting a family, raising children. She reminds me that things like credit cards, medical insurance and equity loans did not exist when she and my father were raising a family. If they wanted something it took years to save up the cash for it.

So if my mother gives you something, even if the thing is twenty years old when you get it, she is also transferring to you all the accumulated memories of what she gave up to save for this thing: all the years of denying herself that new coat, the vacation not taken, the home made dinners of macaroni and beans, the mended clothing, the resoled shoes. When you take a piece of furniture or used clothing from my mother, you had better be prepared to remain devoted to it forever or find a new owner for it when you are done with it, but never ever tell her that you just got sick of it and left it out at the curb on trash day.

She has the same devotion with the gifts she gives. If she spends her good money on something she expects it to last forever, and, likewise, you should keep it forever.

One day, she dropped in unexpectedly on a Saturday afternoon, while my husband was painting the living room ceiling. I followed her eyes as they dropped down to the living room floor where the white bedspread she had given us twelve years earlier for my wedding shower gift was being used as a drop cloth. She became absolutely still and was stunned into silence for a few moments.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

A cool, “Nothing.”

Twenty years later, while working on a quilt for my son, my mother and I were having tea and discussing some concerns I had. “What if his new wife doesn’t like the colors or the design of the quilt and it sits on the shelf in the closet? What if she doesn’t appreciate the years of hard work it took me to finish this masterpiece by hand?”

“Nonsense,” she assured me, “she will love it!”

“What if the cats rip it to shreds with their claws?” I continued. “What if he has breakfast in bed and gets coffee stains on it? What if…”

“…he uses it for a drop cloth?” she finished my sentence and silently sipped her tea.

Did I tell you my mother is also very tactful and will wait a lifetime to drop a bomb like that to drive her point home. Needless to say, I’m still traumatized to think that, as many a philosopher has said: to think a thought is to put it into motion. What if…a drop cloth?! It has been six years so far and I still can’t bring myself to finish the quilt and hand it over to him. So now I’m worse than my mother. At least she gives her things away.