Months later....

I got a card in the mail the other day from my sister; it was a (considerably) belated birthday card. She included a gift: a tiny little silk purse in a tiny little box, and inside the purse was a penny, minted the same year I was born. It was a great gift. A friend I used to work with at the Smithsonian has a birthday the same day as my sister, and he is also good at giving off-beat, inexpensive, oddly-timed gifts that nevertheless hit just the right emotional tone. He sent me a postcard about a year after my son was born, maybe more, with a picture of George Washington on it, and it said something like, "Hope you survived the crossing." It cracked me up. When he and his wife came to Iceland a few years ago, I arranged for them to have breakfast with my aunt (I was in California). They had not ever met each other before, but Stephen and his wife Joan are anthropologists, and so they wanted to get to talk to a local, and my aunt loves interesting people, so I thought the match might work. Indeed it did. She was diligent about cooking up some waffles and cakes, they found their way to her house from the airport, and whala, they had a great conversation and a wonderful visit, by all accounts. A few months later, out of the blue, without any sort of card, she received a fruit basket, and figured it must have been from them. I assured her it was. That was just like Stephen.

My aunt appreciated it, I am sure she did, but she also thought it was a little odd. And since I have moved here, I can more appreciate what she means. Gift giving in Iceland seems to me to be a rather formal affair, with specified rules and standards. A special emphasis on the wrapping actually, which is its own sort of artform here, big celophane sculptures with unique hand made bows on top. This is indeed more in keeping with the Maussian sense of gifts as obligations intended to strengthen social bonds.

My sister and I, and my old colleagues at the Smithsonian and I, instead see gifts as just a little chance every once in a while to say, "I think you are just as terrific today as I did the first time I met you!"