Is Regifting Even an Option After 21 Years?

Regifting

            Late on Christmas night, I dug deep back into one of the lower level kitchen cabinets searching for a vintage Tupperware turkey storage container. During my search for this seldom used rust colored plastic container, I discovered mini-bread pans and two bread tubes that I hadn’t laid eyes on in years.

            The next morning, I was a little wider awake. After breakfast, I began investigating the rediscovered bread baking utensils. I remembered baking in the mini bread loaf pans in the days I was teaching, but not the bread tubes.

I opened the flower- shaped bread tube and pulled out a small leaflet with interesting recipes. I handed to Mother the sheet with various recipes. Then, I turned my attention to the second box that held another canape bread tube in the shape of a heart. Mother’s handwriting had written on it: from Bernadean  12-19-98.

I opened one end of the box to see if it had the same canape bread recipes. To my amazement, the shiny Pampered Chef Valtrompia Bread Tube (in the shape of a heart) remained encased in its original plastic covering. Mother had never opened it!

            I exclaimed, “Mother, you have never used this tube. You haven’t even opened it!”

Without a moment’s hesitation, she asked, “Do you want to regift it?”

            I responded with a slightly elevated voice, “Mother, I can’t regift it. I gave it to you. You would have to regift it.”

She glanced at me sideways and immediately said with conviction, “Well, I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

We stood in the kitchen and laughed uproariously. Several times during the day that one-two minute exchange brought smiles to our faces and laughter into the room.

Upon reflecting about this day-after-Christmas conversation about a gift given 21 years earlier, thankfully, Mother and I were able to turn what could have been a sticky situation into rib-splitting laughter. 
Over the last seven years of returning to live at the farm, I have learned Mother prefers sophistication and elegance in her attire when leaving the farm for church or any other place. On the other hand, tastiness is the main goal in her cooking which, even at age 95, continues to be par excellence. Those canape bread tubes are far too frou-frou for her. I now question why I ever gave her something so impractical for her kitchen. (However, one of my resolutions for the upcoming year is to use the Pampered Chef Valtrompia Bread Tubes to bake at least one loaf of canape bread in the flower shape and another in the heart shape.)

Another thing I have learned upon returning to the farm is to not take situations too seriously. Mother laughs about everything. For over 50 years, she has quoted this verse to me. Maybe I am beginning to learn to live by it.

A merry heart does good like a medicine.

Proverbs 17:22