Tag Archives: Gifts

Heartwings Love Notes 2040: Gifts My Father Gave Me

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Heartwings says, “Gifts may be actual and not physical, either or both.”

It’s time to celebrate fathers, and I have been thinking about my dad and how special he was to me, and also to the many people who appreciated his witty behavior. He loved to be entertaining as well as to entertain. Cocktail parties were his chief delight and he gave them often.

He was a generous person. One memory I have is of him sitting by the living room fireplace at Christmas time, wrapping the generous gifts he gave to the gardeners and caretakers of the estates he did business with. He was a horticulturist by nature, like his grandfather, and professionally, an arborist. He truly enjoyed his work and he was very good at it, able to size up a landscape and improve the views from the windows of the any home he was hired to work for.

One special gift he gave me was a love of trees plus the ability to spot what they might need done to improve them. He often took me with him, especially in the summer, when he drove around either supervising his men where they were working or estimating the work to be done for those who had hired him and the company he worked for. As I travel the roads of my town and its neighbors, to this day, I notice trees and find myself thinking of their needs.

He loved flowers and grew beautiful roses. I wish I had inherited that ability. My efforts to grow them have not met with success. I did inherit his love for flowers, buying them to bring their loveliness into my home when I can. My mother once told me that when they were newly married and he was an aspiring playwright, Daddy would spend the grocery money on flowers leaving them forced to have oatmeal to eat for supper. On special occasions, he would often provide my mother and me with corsages. She would get an orchid, while I got a fragrant gardenia, which I loved.

Above all, he was generous with his time and energy, serving in a volunteer capacity as treasurer to a variety of local organizations. He read for the blind on a local radio station, and I’m sure did other kind actions I never knew about. He was deeply religious, attended his Episcopalian church every Sunday, and took us to services on Christmas and Easter, which I loved, another significant gift.

No one is perfect. Neither was he. But the gifts he gave me far outweigh any negative aspects of his character. He set me an important example of the importance of being of service that has increasingly guided my life. Working on behalf of the greater good is what I call it. It’s about showing up for a need. Whether caring for the landscape or for the world at large, my father set a fine example. 

May you remember your fathers’ gifts with joy.

Blessings and best regards, Tasha Halpert

PS Please, if you have stories to share, write to me and share them. I so enjoy hearing from my readers. Email me at tashahal, at Gmail.com, and check out my blog at http://tashasperspective.com.

A poet and writer, I publish a free weekly blog, Heartwings Love Notes for a Joyous Life. My Books: Up to my Neck in Lemons, and Heartwings, Love Notes for a Joyous Life are available on Amazon. My latest publication available there is my first chapbook, Poems and Prayers, and I have two more in preparation. You can sign up for my blog at http://tashasperspective. Com.

Heartwings Love Notes 2014 Catalogues Abound Now

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Heartwings says, “What to buy for gifts depends upon many factors.”

Every day more catalogues arrive in our small, personal mailbox. Once I found a bill squashed in the bottom of it because the mailbox had been so stuffed. How did the senders get our names? This is one mystery I know not how to solve. I used to call or email and ask to be removed from their list. The excess catalogues seemed to me to be a great waste of paper and postage. I’d even asked at the post office about getting rid of them, but their job is to deliver, not to hold back. Since I have no solution, I just keep discarding all but the few I welcome.

I do keep a small number that we order from. There is a food catalogue that give gifts from each year. They are reasonable and don’t suggest we buy pears that are 2 or 3 dollars each. Tasty I am sure but rather expensive for something that they don’t use fancy ingredients to manufacture. Some of our favorites offer money off if you order before a specific date. This is handy and merciful, especially if one remembers to order before the due date.

When I was ten or twelve, I made the first order I can recall from a catalogue. As I remember, it was a smallish black and white one, with things I thought might please my parents. I bought them a set of ashtrays that featured a heart, a diamond, a spade, and a club on each and were shaped to fit on the corners of a bridge table. How proud and how grown up I felt to have bought them a special present from a catalogue.

My parents and their friends all smoked cigarettes, didn’t everybody? I believe tobacco was different then, however I can’t prove it. My great aunt always had a box of cigarette on her coffee table and most every adult lit up after dinner. That was then, when doctors recommended a certain brand for whatever reason I no longer remember. No one smoked constantly, it was a simple pleasure to be indulged from time to time, not a need to be satisfied. I suspect you won’t find any ashtrays in catalogues these days.

The items in some are almost irresistible, until I remember that my friends do not have any more space for new, ornamental objects than I do. I remember a long time ago reading a quote from someone requesting only gifts she could “Eat, use up, or wear.” Maybe that’s why I often end up with lovely soap, much of which I can’t use, unfortunately, due to the oils I am allergic to. I am also loaded with fancy teas. And nice as they are, I don’t need any more knit hats, either.

May you enjoy choosing from catalogues as you prepare to give your presents,

Blessings and best regards, Tasha Halpert

PS If you have thoughts and/or suggestions to share, I’d be so glad to receive them. For more Love Notes, check my blog at http://tashasperspective.com and click on Pujakins. You can sign up there to receive them weekly as well.

Time To Mail Those Gifts

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Time To Mail Those Christmas Gifts, By Tasha Halpert

In the home I grew up in there was a small triangular closet with a slanting roof under the eves on the second floor. It was lined with narrow shelves. I believe it may originally have been intended for the storage of unripe fruit to be kept for later use in the cold months. My parents used it to store away empty boxes as well as Christmas and birthday presents bought for friends and family during the year, perhaps on sale or on the trips they took. As an adult I adopted this practice and put away gifts I came across during the year.

Once we got together, Stephen joined me in this. All year long, we keep an eye out for items we think will be suitable for friends and family for the holidays. We store what we find away until it is time to get them out and in some cases, mail them off. Having suffered from waiting too long in the past to mail them, we have learned our lesson: we have become true early birds at the post office. Now that Thanksgiving is over, it is time to wrap and send off all that we have accumulated.

Because our apartment is small we have to squirrel things away here and there in out of the way corners. Finding all of the presents we have acquired and bringing them all out into the open is the first step in the giving process. They need to be sorted and decisions made as to for whom we bought which gift. Sometimes what seemed just perfect for someone several months ago evokes question marks when examined in the light of now. It’s fun figuring it all out. Once the gifts are arranged, we consult the address book for those we intend to give to and the wrapping begins.

The actual process of wrapping can be the most difficult part of all. Fortunately I learned some tricks a few years ago from a friend of mine who used to wrap department store gifts. Boxes we have been saving come in handy now, as does the extra tape I purchased and the paper bags we cut up and use to wrap DVDs and books. It is more fun to make use of free stuff than to depend on purchased padded envelopes or boxes. In addition, the rising cost of postage makes it important to be as thrifty as possible when it comes to the mailing of what we have chosen.

Over the years this little ritual has become the opening chords to Stephen’s and my Christmas celebration. Because many of our friends have moved away and some of our family live at a distance, we seldom if ever see them physically. Now the gift giving ritual of choosing and wrapping becomes a heart warming pleasure. As we prepare and address what we have chosen, we spend time thinking of our dear ones and chat about our memories of them. Thus in giving we ourselves receive a gift, and it is even more precious than anything we may mail away.