My mom was a gift giving guru at times... I at least try. :)

I like to think I'm a pretty good gift giver. I pay attention to what people like. I keep Christmas gifts in mind throughout the year. Once in a while I'll give a gift that is pretty darned awesome... one that is actually remembered down the road. My mom has given me a few such gifts. One was Ape, my favorite stuffed animal, that I wrote about previously. Here is a story of another... possibly the coolest gift she ever gave me.

To have you understand the coolness of this gift we have to go back... way back. I'm going to guess I was somewhere between 14 and 16 years old. I was at the Pizza Inn in Goldsboro (the old one near the skating rink... the one with carousel horses in it... just a tidbit for those of you from the area) with my family. We were up at the register paying when mom and I started talking to a woman in line. She had the most incredible bracelet on. Apparently she was a huge Marilyn Monroe fan. Her husband had this bracelet custom made for her. It had small pictures of Marilyn Monroe all around it. I think it may have been gold. It was definitely expensive. Obviously we never saw another bracelet like it... it was a custom piece after all. And by the time I started college it was pretty much wiped from my memory.

Gift Giving Guru at work

So 20 years later or so... I think I was around 35 years old... I was home at Christmas. I opened one of my presents and saw a piece of jewelry. It was a piece of costume jewelry. It had various photos of Marilyn Monroe on it. I looked at it in a somewhat confused manner. I liked it, but I had no memory of the one we saw when I was a kid... though something seemed familiar. I looked up at mom who had a look of anticipation on her face... she was just waiting for me to remember. She starts reminding me a bit about the woman years ago... and I start smiling. Mom had apparently started looking for something like it a couple years... yes, a couple years... before!

I've only worn it a few times. I don't do bracelets much... they tend to make my arm itch. But I pull it out and look at it often. This cheap piece of costume jewelry is the epitome of "it's the thought that counts." So much thought went into this gift. And it was just the best present she ever gave me.