Fortunately or unfortunately, Isabel is an exceptional gift giver. Even though I never actually know what gift I want, she still successfully gets me just the thing I wanted or needed. So when it’s my turn to get her gifts, I feel the pressure to give her something she’ll appreciate just as much. (It does not help that her birthday is in February, when I need to think real hard about our Valentine’s plans as well!)
It’s definitely a challenge to think of gifts for Isabel mainly because I want to give her what she deserves, and what she deserves is the best (at least, in my opinion). More practically, it’s because once she decides she wants something, she goes out and gets it herself! She’s beaten me to it on many occasions, snapping up shoes, clothes, and even a bar of soap for herself before I could. But she once shared her technique for choosing gifts with me – a technique I’ve since tried to employ: a good gift should sit in the intersection of at least two areas of the intended recipients’ interest: something they want, something they need, and/or something they like. Illustrated, choose A, B, C, or D (Fig 1). D would be the best in principle:
Fig. 1 – Isabel’s Gift Giving Venn Diagram
This year, my jump-off point for thinking of a gift was our future plans. I will be moving abroad in a few months, which means our relationship will be long distance. Since that would mean less time for us to be together physically, I thought of a gift that would give us different experiences to put in our memory bank. With some research, I came up with four activities to do on each Saturday of the month. I ensured that some were events she had mentioned before, even just in passing.
There was something about simply handing her the tickets that I found too straightforward and uneventful, so I ideated on how I could do a gift reveal she would appreciate. This is what I came up with:
Fig. 2 – Not bad for a non-artsy mathlete!
I created little fabric envelopes to house the tickets, and separated each with a foam tab. I also wrote a short stanza of Filipino poetry (tanaga) for each activity lined up. I made Isabel guess what each clue meant – and I’ll divulge each activity in the posts to follow. For now, here are the four stanzas:
Nagliliparang lobo.
At katabing maganda.
Malay ko’y nalilito!
Sino bida sa mata?
Hindi maitatatwang,
Ito’y dati pa nais.
Ang pagliyab sa puwang,
Higante! ‘Di lang kwitis.
Ikatlong pasiklab ko
Kalikasan ‘di pook
Aabuting totoo
Ang taluktok ng bundok
Ang nakapapanabik
Na sayaw ang susunod.
Ang karanasang mithi’t
Sisne’y mapapanood.
Isabel : Spoiler! I cried and we had a great February.
M + I 