Memories are Gifts that Keep on Giving

The gift of giving is one I have always gotten great joy from. My Grandma always loved giving gifts too, but she was terrible at picking out gifts. She was also a re-gifter and a clean out my closets and pantry kind of gifter. Every time we went to her house she would try to send us home with at least one plastic grocery bag of stuff, always junk no one in their right mind would want.

She used to coupon, and I don't mean the kind of couponing where you find coupons for things you use or things you want; I meant the kind of couponing where you clip EVERY coupon in the circular and buy everything you can find at the grocery store. This meant she bought every new strange flavored chip, cookie, cracker, cereal, salad dressing, and more that she could find. She would open the box and taste these new products and decide they were awful and put them back in her pantry. Then, when company came, usually my family, she would go through the pantry with grocery bags and send her open boxes of random junk home with us, where my mother would promptly throw them all away.

She didn't just buy weird grocery stuff. She bought all kinds of other weird junk, that then found other homes. When I was in college I took a guy I was dating to their house. When we arrived she did her normal going through everything to find something to give us. Well, the poor guy I was dating left with an umbrella hat. Yup, you did read that right, an umbrella hat. It was always something and usually something off the wall.

I got some terrible birthday and Christmas gifts, too. As a fourth grader my Grandma gave me a shirt for my birthday. She always gave a toy or book and some kind of clothes. This year the shirt was awful... I mean absolutely horrendous. It was the ugliest shirt I have seen in all my life. It was maroon, purple, goldenrod, a little green, and ugly. The shirt was long sleeves with a ruffle at each of the sleeves and along the bottom hem. One sleeve was purple and goldenrod vertical stripes. The other sleeve was purple with goldenrod and green polka dots. The front of the shirt was an atrocious floral pattern with huge roses maroon roses on an odd purple background. The ruffles were all horizontal stripes. Then the back of the shirt was a plaid type pattern with all the ugly colors. I hated that shirt. The fabric was scratchy on top of being ugly. I hid it in the back of my closet for a while. Almost every time I saw my Grandma for almost two years she asked about that shirt and why I didn't wear it to her house and I lied... I always told her it was in the dirty clothes because I had worn it recently.  About six months or so in I threw the ugly shirt away. It was too ugly to even feel good about putting in our giveaway bag. I finally after almost two years told Grandma I had outgrown it so she would quit asking.

Then, when I was in sixth grade my Grandma got me Sesame Street birthday blowers; you know, the kind you find at little kid's birthday parties that you blow and they make a noise and the rolled up paper unfurls. It was hard to put on a happy smile when I opened that Christmas gift. I remember being thoroughly disappointed with it, but now it is one of my fondest memories. She was excited about them. She loved to give people things.
In her later years of life, she really missed the joy of sending us home with stuff. When she was in assisted living she did not drive and could not cart boatloads of stuff home on the bus that took them to Walmart so she had to reign in her shopping. When we would leave from our visits she would say, in a disheartened voice, "I'm sorry I don't have anything to give you." You gave us enough, Grandma, enough love and memories to last for lifetimes. Memories are gifts that keep on giving.