A little over a year ago, I took my children to New York City for the first time. Since they are country kids, I expected them to be stunned by the height of the skyscrapers, the crush of the crowds, the blare of the horns. And they were. But the sight that really threw them was the paperweight they found in their grandfather's office.
We had decided to meet him there before taking the train home together. Kyle and Jake had just crawled into his big leather chair, when they saw something that stopped them dead. With all the affront a five-year-old can muster, Kyle pointed to the oval rock painted black and red to resemble a ladybug. He turned to his brother and whispered, "Did you make him that?" When Jake shook his head, Kyle looked up. "Well, neither did I." They glared at my father, as if wondering what other grandchildren he might be hiding in the closet.
"Actually," I said, stepping forward to pick it up, "I made it." I had been four at the time. But there it sat on my father's desk 28 years later, along with the rudely coiled clay pencil holder I'd given him around the same time. I looked around the office, aware, suddenly, of the incongruity of my wedding picture just inches away from that ladybug paperweight, and wondering whatever had become of the lovely desk set my brother and I had bought him when we finally started to make some money as teens.
"Dad," I said, laughing, "people must think you have a kindergartner at home." He shrugged, taking the painted rock from me. "I like it," he said.
As paperweights go, it's abysmal. It has none of the jazz or delicacy of others I've seen in stores. But to my dad, it's clearly priceless.
I'm like my dad. I'll take a kid's gift over a sleek, Sharper Image package any day. There's just no comparison to a present made from little more than spit, glue and imagination and handed over with a grin. Every parent I know has a collection of such treasures. Maybe it's because it gives us a chance to see through the eyes of our child. Or maybe it's the moment we want to hang on to.
The following are ideas for gifts that could only have come from your child. And judging from the look on my father's face when he opened his latest present from Kyle and Jake, they're guaranteed to please. But I won't mind if my ladybug paperweight gets pushed aside to make room for my sons' paper-clip holder--a box topped with a photo collage of their faces. How could I? There's one a lot like it on the corner of my own desk.
Jodi Picoult is a freelance writer and novelist in Hanover, New Hampshire.
