Best gift you've given

[murphyc]

For me, probably time.
My mom was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer in the fall of 2001. My dad quit his well-paying contract gig with Microsoft the following summer to take care of her full-time. I came home every weekend both to spend time with them and to give relief to my dad. In the spring of 2003, I quit my job and moved back home to help take care of my mom in her final months, plus to be with my dad so he wouldn't be lonely in the aftermath.

When my older niece (my brother's first child) was born in 2000, I gave my brother a copy of the then-new Don Henley "Inside Job" CD, since it included the song "Taking You Home."
Speaking of that niece, she turns 16 in a couple of years. I'm hoping to give her my Honda (which I got from my dad last summer) as a Sweet 16 birthday gift.

 

[WriteThinking]

I gave my son life.

Is this in your basic, sardonic "I fathered my kid," way? Or, is there more to this? I feel like maybe there is, and that I've missed it in previous posts?

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

I gave Buck a kidney

 

[Songbird]

The best recent present I gave was to my 9-year-old goddaughter, who is studying math arrays -- never even heard of an array but apparently it's one of the new techniques in math. She showed me what it is but I'm still having a difficult time wondering why they're using this technique. How does it make learning better, or faster, or better suited for the real world?

Anyway, I'll correct her arrays every now and then. The word "array" has become a little inside joke now, one of our bonding things. So for one of the nights of Hanukah I made her an "A-Ray of Rays" -- pictures of famous Rays. She loved it. Still brings it to me every few nights so I can quiz her on the Rays. She brought it to school for Show and Tell.

 

[mustangj17]

I broke into old Tiger Stadium before it was demolished and stole some bricks for my mom. It's the thought that counts.