Today was my forty-first birthday. When I woke up, my daughter was incredibly excited to give me the presents she and her mother had purchased for me just the night before. I was in the shower, and she ran into the bathroom to tell me that she was going into the guest room to wrap the present. Several minutes later, she came in to tell me that her mother was going to help her because she (my daughter) isn’t very good at wrapping presents.
I toweled off, put in my contacts, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, put on deoderant, opened the bathroom the door, and walked down the hallway to my bedroom. She followed on my heels, the bag of presents in her hand. I put on a pair of boxer briefs and sat on the bed. She climbed up next to me. Her mother leaned against the doorway.
I opened the bag. They’d placed a card on top of the presents. My daughter’s eyes opened wide in anticipation as my fingers picked at the folds of the envelope. I don’t remember exactly what the card said, but it played a noise when you opened it, and that’s what she was waiting for; she burst out laughing at the sound.
I laid the card aside, and my daughter said something about it not being Christmas. It took me a moment to figure it out, but the wrapping paper they’d used on the topmost present was Christmas-themed and my daughter didn’t want me to think she didn’t know it was Christmas. I opened the present. It was a desk-sized fan that came with a banana clip —— so you can, you know, clip it onto the side of something. My daughter was so excited about the banana clip. I looked up at my wife confusingly, looked back at my daughter, smiled, said thank you, told her how much I loved it, and gave her a great big hug and kiss.
At the bottom of the giftbag were two Halloween-sized bags of Kit-Kats. I smiled at her again, said thank you, and gave both her and my wife a kiss.
It wasn’t until about 12 hours later that I was able to appreciate their gifts for what they were.
Say what you want, but it’s true: I love fans. I’d have a fan blowing on me all night and day if I could make it happen. It’s not a temperature thing (per se); I just love the feel of air moving across my body.
My wife does not love fans. She puts up with them because she loves me, but if she had it her way, we’d live where the heat presses down on your body like a heavy-weighted blanket. I only mention this to demonstrate that there are, in fact, people who do not love fans.
But I am not one of them, and both my daughter and my wife know this about me.
I also love Kit Kat bars. This is a love I don’t very much advertise. Anyone who knows me knows of my love of Sour Patch Kids, chocolate ice cream, and Doritos, but my Kit Kat love — that one’s just for me. I only buy them in the checkout line of the grocery store, and they are usually devoured before I leave the parking lot, their little wrappers shoved back into the far corner of the hard plastic pocket on the inside of my driver’s side door, far from the prying eyes of anyone but me.
My wife and daughter don’t often go food shopping with me. We go as a family maybe once or twice a month, but the rest of the time, I go alone. I don’t specifically not buy Kit Kat bars when they are with me, but I do specifically try to prevent my daughter from asking me to buy her candy, and so whenever we grocery shop as a family, I try to rebuff my own Kit-Kat-desiring urges so as not to inspire her own. While I know my wife and daughter have definitely seen me purchase a number of Kit Kat bars over the years, I did not know they had seen me purchase them enough times to realize my secret love for them.
So, for my forty-first birthday, my wife and daughter gave me two things I most unquestionably love: a desk-sized fan with a banana clip, which means I can bring it with my anywhere, allowing me virtually nonstop access to the feeling of air moving across my skin; and two whopping bags of what has quietly become my truly favorite candy.
If that isn’t a demonstration of their intimate knowledge of who I am and what I love, then I don’t know what is.
Which means, for my forty-first birthday, my wife and daughter gave me the only gift that matters: a reminder of how thankful I am to be in their lives.
I told my daughter tonight that of all the years I’ve been alive, this past one has been my favorite. I hope she knows I meant it.