174. The Gifts that Stick – Marie McGrory
It is satisfying and feels good to get just what you want. Yet when I think back to the best gifts I have ever received, they are not things I wanted. In fact, they were not things I had even considered.
In the last few years, I have fallen into the anti-waste, sustainably minded, wannabe minimalist type who asks my family for very specific gifts. “Hi Mom, I would like this shower curtain for Christmas.” “Hey Aaron, could you buy me these shoes in this color for my birthday?” It is satisfying and feels good to get just what you want. Yet when I think back to the best gifts I have ever received, they are not things I wanted. In fact, they were not things I had even considered. The gifts that have stuck with me for years seem to be a magical potion of time spent, thoughtfulness, love, and a dash of surprise.
A favorite gift is actually from a group—a group I can visualize, but cannot individually name. It came in a large but very light box around my eleventh birthday, when I was a few months into treatment for blood cancer. I was back home in New York City after living abroad in Vienna for my dad’s job, and my middle school friends were an ocean away. As I peeked into the dull brown cardboard, I was awed to find an explosion of colors—every color on the spectrum, and patterns and glimmering metallics too. They were origami paper cranes, some big, others tiny, some with crooked wings or unbent heads.
I learned from the card that the gift of one thousand paper cranes, called a Senbazuru, was a wish for good luck or good health in Japanese culture. I knew at that moment, looking at the hundreds of cranes, that this expressed a measure of love and thoughtfulness that I had never received in a gift. I am not sure what my classmates expected I would do with them. For many years I was unsure of what to do with them, but these folded papers have grown with me and made my life richer in ways I could not have imagined. The origami cranes have decorated every home I’ve lived in. They have inspired me to gather friends to fold cranes for our loved ones who are sick, each time providing a new, meaningful memory. They have led to new connections and powerful time spent teaching others.
When I look at the cranes two decades later, I’m still filled with love. I’m still reminded of the power of community. I’m also reminded of what my mother always says: “The little things are really the big things.”
– Marie McGrory
