The Greatest Gifts Aren’t Always the Ones We Unwrap

When I was little, my family lived in Irving, Texas, while my dad was in medical school. At the time, there were only two of us kids—my brother Michael and me—and one of the great adventures of childhood was going to Dallas to visit my mom’s Uncle Jack and Uncle Carl.

Uncle Jack was actually my mother’s uncle. Uncle Carl was his roommate.

At least, that was the explanation.

They were roommates for more than 35 years.

They raised champion pedigreed cats. They were active in the Dallas Cat Club. Their landscaping seemed to change every time we visited. They entertained beautifully. They served cocktails properly.

And they had a lanai.

I’m just going to leave all of that information there and allow you to draw whatever conclusions you wish.

To us, though, they were simply Uncle Jack and Uncle Carl.

I loved going to their house.

There was always a tour when we arrived. We had to see what was new in the landscaping and, of course, visit the cats. Eventually we would make our way toward the pool, where the adults would settle in for the afternoon.

And then came my favorite part.

Uncle Carl would ask what everyone wanted to drink and then turn to me.

“Come help me.”

Those may have been three of the most exciting words a six-year-old boy could hear.

I would follow him into the house while he prepared the drinks. Somewhere along the way, he taught me what he considered the secret to a perfect martini: take the frozen glass from the freezer, pour in a capful of dry vermouth, roll it around the inside of the glass, and dump it out. Whatever clings to the glass is exactly enough. Add the properly chilled vodka, and there you have it.

I was six.

Other children were learning multiplication tables. I was apparently being trained for cocktail service.

Once everything was ready, the drinks went onto a sterling silver tray. Real stemware. Real cocktails. Real silver.

And Uncle Carl trusted me to carry it.

I would balance that tray on one hand, walk through the house and out the back door onto—yes—the lanai, then serve the adults one by one.

I never spilled a drop.

And Uncle Carl would watch me do it with the unmistakable pride of someone who knew I could.

There was usually another ritual before we went outside.

Carl would hand me a $100 bill.

“Put this in your piggy bank,” he would tell me. “Do NOT spend it. Later, you’re going to need it.”

A hundred dollars was an unimaginable amount of money to a little boy. I’m not sure I completely understood what $100 meant. I only knew it was important because Uncle Carl told me it was.

Those hundred-dollar bills were generous gifts.

But nearly fifty years later, they aren't what I remember most.

I remember the tray.

It took me a very long time to understand why.

Come Help Me

Adults sometimes assume that making children feel loved means making them the center of attention.

Uncle Carl did something better.

He made me part of what was happening.

When the adults gathered by the pool, I wasn't simply one of the children who happened to be nearby. I had a role. There was something I had been taught and was trusted to do well.

I wasn't being humored.

I was helping.

There is an enormous difference.

Children spend much of their lives being told what they aren't ready for yet. You're too little. That's for grown-ups. Be careful. Put that down. Go play.

Most of those instructions are perfectly reasonable. Children are, after all, remarkably creative little agents of destruction.

But every once in a while, an adult pulls over a chair and says, “Come help me.”

And suddenly the child isn't standing outside the grown-up world looking in.

There's a place for them.

Maybe it's holding the flashlight while Grandpa works on the car. Standing beside an aunt learning the family recipe. Setting the Thanksgiving table with the good dishes. Being asked an opinion about something that actually matters.

The activity itself isn't particularly important.

The message underneath it is.

You matter here.

There is a place for you here.

You belong here.

The Gifts We Don't Know We're Giving

I don't know whether Uncle Carl ever realized what those afternoons meant to me.

I suspect he thought he was simply entertaining his family. He probably didn't wake up thinking, Today I shall impart a formative childhood memory.

He made martinis.

He handed a little boy a tray.

And he trusted him not to drop it.

That's the funny thing about showing up in a child's life. We rarely get to choose which moments they'll keep.

The expensive birthday present may eventually disappear into a closet. The carefully planned outing may become a fuzzy memory.

And then, thirty or forty or fifty years later, they'll tell a story about something we barely remember doing.

A trip to the hardware store. The funny song you always sang in the car. Saturday morning pancakes. The time you let them stay up much too late. The afternoon you taught them something everyone else thought they were too young to learn.

The moment you handed them something valuable and said, without actually saying it:

I trust you.

These are gifts, too.

And unlike most of the things we wrap, they have a peculiar way of becoming more valuable with time.

A Place That Was Mine

There was something else about Uncle Jack and Uncle Carl that I couldn't have explained then.

Their home felt different to me.

At five or six years old, I didn't have the language to understand why. I knew nothing about sexuality or relationships. Nobody sat me down and explained Uncle Jack and Uncle Carl to me, and I never thought to ask.

They were simply them.

But somehow, even at that age, I sensed that whatever made them a little different was something I recognized.

Something familiar.

I wouldn't understand that feeling until many years later.

And I don't need to understand it for this memory to matter.

Because before I knew the words for any of it, I knew what it felt like to walk into their home.

I was welcome.

I was seen.

I had a place.

Perhaps that's one of the most important things the people in a child's life can give them.

Not an explanation of who they're supposed to become.

Not a blueprint for the life they're supposed to build.

Just enough room to discover it for themselves—and the certainty that while they're figuring it out, there is a place where they belong.

The Silver Tray

I have no idea what happened to those hundred-dollar bills.

I'm sure they eventually became something. College expenses, perhaps. A bill that needed paying. Some purchase I've long since forgotten.

Uncle Carl was right.

Eventually, I needed them.

But all these years later, when I think about the gifts he gave me, I don't picture money.

I picture a sterling silver tray.

I can still see the stemware arranged on it. I remember how important the whole operation felt. I can picture the walk toward the back door and out onto that wonderfully, gloriously, unnecessarily named lanai.

And I remember knowing that Uncle Carl trusted me to carry it.

That's the gift that lasted.

We spend a lot of time wondering what to give the children we love. Birthdays come. Holidays come. Packages get wrapped. Toys get outgrown. Eventually, most of those things disappear.

So give them presents. Absolutely.

Buy the ridiculous toy. Bring the surprise. Be the Guncle who occasionally shows up with something their parents would never have purchased in a million years.

Those gifts can become memories, too.

But while you're there, give them something else.

Ask them to come help.

Teach them something.

Trust them with something that matters.

Make room for them at the table.

Give them a role in the traditions they'll someday remember.

Because children don't always need us to make them feel like the most important person in the world.

Sometimes they simply need us to make them feel like an important person in ours.

To know:

You matter here.

You have a place here.

You belong here.

Uncle Carl gave me a lot of hundred-dollar bills.

But the greatest gift he gave me was letting me carry the tray.