What are you really giving? 

For a person who believes that experiences are so important- I am always challenged at this time of year– do I have enough for the people I love under our tree…was there something that I didn’t remember that they needed throughout the year– and maybe I wasn’t listening, or remembering or paying attention….

My favourite gifts that I have given and been given are the ones where I feel as though it’s evidence that I was listening, or that someone else was listening to me.

Not in an apparent way, but in a subtle way – listening to what was really needed, or important and not recently, but throughout the year.

I don’t consider myself a shopper.

Until I travel somewhere and then I am very interested in going into lovely shops, particularly where the things are made locally to that area by actual people.

I usually come home with a suitcase full of things that I have gathered for the ones who are most important to me and I thought that they would like it, or it reminded me of them…..

I do have a thing for tea towels — so my friends have had quite a few from me over the years….

All of this gift giving and gift receiving got me to thinking about what really is the message that accompanies the gift.

In October, I was in Copenhagen.

My mom’s best friend’s daughter and I are dear friends.

She is the one that I made that surprise quilt for and sent it to Denmark only to be delivered back to me in Canada. I ended up giving it to her in person several months later in Denmark.

When we were talking about where we would like to meet up, she generously offered several possibilities that all sounded great.

I chose the one where we meet at the train station near where she grew up and where I lived with her and her family for a summer between high school and university.

We then went for high tea at a local tea house on a castle grounds. Weirdly, I couldn’t ever remember going there — it was just 2 minutes in the car from the station.

Queen Louise’s Teahouse https://www.dronninglouisestehus.dk/

We always bring each other gifts. My gift was some tea that I had bought at a famous place in Paris that I had visited 2 days before when I saw 25,000 steps worth of Paris…plus a boat ride on the Seine. I’ve had this tea many times before- it is a favourite.

Her gift to me came in the form of a story, and then a box she had bought the previous summer when she thought of me.

She gets this newsletter. It is written in English not Danish. She is a busy lawyer with a large family.

As any good lawyer that I know, she prepared for our meeting. In fact, that’s how she started her story…”in preparing for today….”

She made the time to go back and catch up with what I was doing. She read the back issues of this newsletter. She watched some of my Youtube series that I did from the garden this spring and summer ( for 19 weeks).

And when I opened the package, she quoted me back to me: ” A Seed of an Idea!”

It was an Emma Bridgewater mug with sweet peas on it!

I can’t tell you how I felt seen.

Wow- that meant and means So.Very.Much to me!

​In the first video in my series I held up one of my sweet pea seeds and said I have a seed of an idea — it was to share stories of connection through creativity from the bottom of my garden each week. I wasn’t sure how long I would do it. It was a creative experiment. At the end of the season, I held up a sweet pea seed resulting from the plants that I had grown — this experiment had lasted the entire season of my sweet peas— full circle moment, indeed.

I have had two tea pots from the British potter. And LOVED them!

I drink out of one of the many tea cups from Emma Bridgewater at a friend’s house from her extensive collection. But I have never owned a mug.

My friend and I share a love of sweet peas, of having tea, of learning about new places. So typical, she never comes for tea here – why would she – it takes a friend from afar to be a tourist in your own town ( that has been my experience too).

But most of all, as I adore using this mug for my Earl Grey at home, it reminds me of spending a blustery cold afternoon in a small and exquisitely decorated, elegant room with a delicious fusion of Danish and British treats, in the company of my old friend.

A friend who knew my mom.

Who knew me when I was young.

We have so many memories from when our families were together with our Moms, Dads and siblings, and then later with just our life partners, then our children, and then taking care of our mothers in their old age, then with only our partners again.

And on this day, just us, all the memories of all the joys and challenges woven into our faces.

We are so lucky to have this.

It is so rare to sit in each other’s company since we live so far away from each other.

We are both able to articulate how much it means to us.

To start sharing memories and then not have to explain.

It is a gift.

And not one I take for granted.

It’s not always possible to be near the ones we want to be at Christmas. But maybe the objects we hold might remind us of our time together and the close feeling we are lucky to have had.