This is another of those questions with contingencies circling around a word. Today, it’s ‘gift’. I mean, the gifts of life and good health are often on people’s lists. I’ve experienced enough personal health scares to appreciate those words. A memory seared into my being is of being very sick one year. Bronchitis turned to pneumonia. I awoke to Mom’s high pitched appeals, “Please, Lord, let my son live.” Her efforts worked, as here I am. Pretty good gift, I think.
Then there is the best gift received as a present. That would be a 1/20 scale model of a 1961 Jaguar XK-E. I was around nine or ten years old. Car fever bowled me over. Porsches, Corvettes, Ferraris, name it. But that Jag impressed me as the most stylistic art on four wheels. The roadster was my choice but the model was a coupe. It was fun to build, and I displayed the result with pride.
However, there was a shirt given to me when I was fourteen. A female classmate had a crush on me. I was aware of this because other girls wrote me a note informing me of the fact. Later that week, she bought the shirt, and gave it to me as a gift. Although the shirt wasn’t my style, I was flattered. Astonished, really. In retrospect, I understand how much courage it took her to buy that and give it to me.
I suppose, though, the best gift is that kiss and hug my wife gave me the first time she ever told me she loved me. Unable to speak the words, she wrote them in the steam on a window. We were teenagers and that’s another memory captured in amber. Married a few years later, we’re still married fifty years later.
So, not an easy question to answer. The question does force me to realize how many great gifts I’ve received.
I hope I was able to give a few to others along the way.
Michael Seidel, writer 
Nice piece, nice Jaguar.
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Thanks. Wish it was my car. Timeless marriage of beauty and engineering IMO. Cheers
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You are welcome, brother. A day nighs and it is practically here, and you will, for a beauteous purpose, ride one of such automobiles. But that will be when we combine to engineer some generations or writings to bless and beautify life. And how ripe are you for it, bro?
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best gift I ever recieved was this house: it has been in my husband’s family since 1790, and had recently been abandoned and robbed. His grandmother one night took us aside and said, “I’ve come to a decision and you kids can help me. We can’t afford to keep the farm any longer, and we can’t live there. I can either sell the house, as is or–give it to you kids.” “We’ll take it”, I said, without hesitation. We were in our early twenties, not rich, and living in an apartment. Her face smiled all over. she’d been hoping, I realized.
On the way home I said to my husband, “was that okay?” He paused, still stunned. “Er, well, yeah, I guess…” which I carefully accepted as a shocked “oh hell YES” and also realized that if he didn’t want to live there, he could send postcards to me, the new owner. 52 years, no regrets.
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Very cool story. I have smiles all over from reading it. Cheers
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It’s a bit scary, I will admit. Glad I could make your day…=)
Now and then it happens, and I don’t fight it. I bought my first car that way, too. as we walked into the dealership I saw a little dark blue Honda. I pointed and said to the clerk, ‘what about that one?” I drove it home, and it lasted me 13 years…it doesn’t happen often, but when it does it happens all at once.
Some things you just know, either for good or ill.
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