the gift should survive tuesday
I have a small test for a gift: what happens to it on Tuesday?
The wrapping’s gone. Everyone’s back at work. Someone has put the good scissors somewhere ridiculous.
Does the gift get used? Does it make someone laugh? Has it already found a spot beside their favorite chair?
That’s the bit I’m interested in.
The unwrapping is lovely. Then there’s the rest of it.
I spend a fair amount of time engraving words onto things. Which sounds slightly odd when you say it like that, but here we are.
What I love is imagining where those words end up.
A coaster on someone’s desk that makes a colleague stop and read it. A bookmark quietly defending a person’s questionable relationship with deadlines. A photograph finally escaping the phone and making it into a frame.
Small things. Quite a lot going on.
Sometimes the words are sentimental. Sometimes they’re sip happens.
I enjoy the range.
useful can still have a personality.
There’s something satisfying about an object that does its job and manages to say something about the person using it.
Especially when you know the backstory.
The friend who says she’s got nothing, then calls mahjong. The reader who absolutely cannot stop at the end of this chapter. The person whose particular saying has become everyone else’s saying too.
You see the thing and immediately know who it belongs to.
Including, occasionally, yourself. Convenient.
Anyway. Back to Tuesday.
When I’m choosing a gift, I like imagining it already in someone’s life.
Where would they put it? Would they reach for it? Would they send me a photo because the wording made them laugh again?
There’s no elaborate scoring system. I have enough admin.
Just a little thought about what happens after the paper comes off.
Have someone in mind? Take a look around Steele Stewart → You might recognize them.
