The Best Gift

The holidays are a fading memory now, and I'm not sure if the arctic cold that seems to have gripped the entire country will preserve those memories a little longer than normal, or freeze them out as my mind focuses instead on getting to the next warm place as soon as possible. Just in case it is the latter, I'd better get my holiday thoughts written down now.

Did you get a favorite gift this year? My friends and family were once again abundantly generous. I will be looking smart in my new clothes, and I received enough interesting books to keep me reading for months. My in laws added a touch of class to my office life with an attractive set of desk implements--including a cool desktop telescope, with which I can watch for attacking rival bankers from my sixth-floor office window. For me, it was a typical year of material blessing at Christmas.

But one of our tenets at Present Tense Living is to seek to be rich not in things, but in REM: relationships, experiences, and memories with the people in our lives. With that in mind, I must declare that my favorite gift of the year was not a thing at all: it was time. I got to spend nearly two full weeks with my family, including my brother and parents, in Phoenix. The trip was a blessing of time well spent, and not just because of the warm weather. I played in the pool with the kids; took morning jogs while the rising sun painted the desert sky; lingered over the table with my parents and brother, catching up on personal news; showed my kids the Grand Canyon for the first time, and watched them delight in throwing snowballs into the abyss; and walked with my toddler as he chased desert bunnies across the sidewalk. We had a grand time, and oh how hard it was to return to freezing Atlanta.

In short, it was two weeks of doing nothing, but it meant everything to me. There were no schedules to keep, no pressures to be productive, no rushing around to do more in less time. We were simply there, enjoying each other's company, and delighting in the gift of time. We built relationships, shared experiences, and created memories that will last long after our last Christmas gift has been consigned to the landfill.

If only we could capture a little of that feeling in regular life! The ability to set aside the quotidian cares of existence for just an evening, or a weekend day, would do wonders for our psyches, I believe. Perhaps my new year's resolution should be to pick one evening a week to do nothing, or to have no purpose, other than to spend time with my family. If we all agreed to do it, maybe we could capture a little of that holiday magic throughout the year--what an enduring gift that would be.