Gift

A surprise. 'I've got something for you,' said Anmi. A beautiful picture book: 'Gus & Me, The Story of My Grandad and My First Guitar' by Keith Richards, illustrated by his daughter. It's a simple story about a powerful phenomenon: the influence of grandparents on grandchildren, in this case with regard to music, musical instruments and the guitar.

Grandfather, grandson and dog walking, walking all over town and in the countryside: a potent image for me, and the story of one night the two spent under a tree on Primrose Hill looking at stars above and the city below reminds me of an excursion my extended family made when I was a small boy to a small island or peninsula in the Clyde estuary down from Glasgow. We'd got there by rowing over a glassy sea. It was a grey day and we built a fire, I remember, in the lee of rocks, but the whole occasion was so jolly I suggested we spend the night.

That memory, one more gift in this gift, in addition to the sheer generous deed itself.  You, Anmi, ardent fan of the Rolling Stones that you are, have with this present fully and finally pulled me close to the fire of your passion through the link with my grandfatherly heart (such a silly thing it is, but wonderful.) I see myself, I see you, I see us in this perfect gift.

So it is with gifts. Lewis Hyde in his classic book on the subject, explores the way in gift cultures that things appreciate in value as they are passed from one to another, each donor's name added to the pedigree of the item; regifting as an economy. That's an explicit, documentable process. But the thing that happened when you, excited, laid the book on my hands was one more step in the endless, implicit circle of giving: Gus to his grandson, his grandson to you as music, as spectacle, as a form of transcendence, and you to me as as a token of your regard.

I'm moved and challenged by this gift. The challenge,of course, to be a grand grandfather to young Myja, to be worthy of the respect of you, my indomitable friend, and to practice giving, being a giver, one engaged in knitting what keeps the world warm.