What Gift Do You Give Someone Who Has Everything — But Means the World to You?

The photo was taken by a friend of mine who helped with printing and delivery

While growing up I got envelopes full of cash, golden neklace, bracelets, earrings for special occasions. None of these made feel special. Not because I didn’t use the money later on, or was ungrateful for the expensive jewellery, rather because they didn’t mean anything to me.

But there are incredible gifts, I will never forget, because their value is love, nothing else. I was around 6, when my Mum created a small theatre for my puppets from cardboard. The brown, thick base was covered with light blue gingham patterned wrapping paper, in front of the “stage” curtains were hanging.

She made while I was asleep for several nights. She made it with love. I felt special.

Today my Mum turned 70.

I have been thinking for long days what to give her. She gave me this life and many other gifts in it. What on Earth can be equal to this? Plus through the decades she has been working hard, so she has everything what she needs.

Only one idea seemed to be good enough: a small booklet which title is “70 Things I Learned From You.” (This is what you can see on the photo above, and it’s in Hungarian.) I literally collected 70 funny and serious “life lessons” which made me the person who I am today.

Some of them would mean nothing to an outsider like “Cold coffee makes you beautiful” which she keeps telling me whenever we drink coffee together, or “Building houses from Lego bricks is best during Christmas”, because we used to do that together.

But she also taught me that I should not rely on one single income stream, that family is really important in life, and if you have to do physical work like putting the goods on the shelves in a grocery store to make ends meet, you do that — there is no shame in it.

I hoped she would like these sentiments, would laugh and cry while reading the small booklet, and she will feel special and loved. Just like I did decades ago.

A really good friend of mine helped me editing the layout, she printed it, and delivered it to her yesterday, because Mum and me are approximately 1500 kms away from each other at the moment. She opened the envelope containing the gift first thing when she woke up this morning, and immediately texted me that it made her emotional.

That was enough for me and I knew she appreciates this more than a box of golden jewellery worth millions of HUF. She is happy now and that means the world to me.

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