Gifts are Stories
Not prizes, not rewards, not entitlements, not charity, but gifts. Consciously or not, something vulnerable and connective happens around gifts offered and gifts received. Something shifts in both giver and receiver. It is always a story.
Rite of passage gifts – A family ring; a graceful, well-turned toast; a meal cooked in celebration; your Mother’s or your Father’s books; their letters to each other after they divorced, planted somewhere in your future without them. Stories with wisdom sewn into the pockets, told over and over and remembered when it counts.
Habitual gifts, like breakfast delivered to her in bed every Sunday. A little note in every lunch box, hidden from your peers but kept in a box for decades.
Messy, ill-conceived gifts that are more about the giver than the receiver. A puppy in a box, to make up for other things that are missing.
Hooked Gifts – are gifts gifts if they come loaded with expectation of repayment, with hidden agenda, unresolved baggage? The answer lies with the receiver, though this can be a hard, hard choice. Harsh gifts require conscious effort to transmute into something that can be freely accepted, something that can be given-forward. Painful gifts name you Victim, and then you need to climb out of that hole to learn that you’re not and you never were. The transmutation of a hooked gift is a gift in itself, like a choice made to clean up a toxic dump site and plant a food garden there.
Imprisonment can be a gift, death also – It depends on how you choose to dance with it. That in turn depends on how well you know and trust yourself. Loss of memory can be a gift of release, but complex like death for the ones who remember. Honesty can be a gift that feels like death.
Gifts can be the kick in the ass you needed, the slap in the face that snapped you out of it. A sucker punch might teach you something valuable about yourself, something you would not have known otherwise. A pointed question, well-delivered at the right time, can be life-altering.
Quiet gifts are easiest to miss. A sunbeam that sings onto your bare toe in the morning. A smile, a glance of shared awareness, a song that connects you to the first love you felt in your bones. A breeze that lifts your shirt a little, to make you laugh. A long, honest friendship. There’s a gift of a poem by Seamus Heaney that reminds me of my dad: “a squat pen rests between finger and thumb…”
Poets notice. Art is made from noticing. You can’t receive a gift if you don’t notice it.
There’s no right or wrong about how or when to offer a gift or how you choose to receive them. Demanding or graceful, they’re all valuable. I have found that I now prefer not to give or to receive the harsh ones.
Something vulnerable and connective happens around gifts offered and gifts received.
Something shifts. It’s always a story.
I’m publishing a new series of audio stories and video in August 2025 on KeiraMcArthur.Substack.com (podcast). They’re called Tales of Gifts and Wonder. I hope you will join me there.