The most memorable gift ever, ever - so far

Kirk Ericson | Dec 23, 20210

This is a story about a gift my father gave me when I was about 5 years old. This story is as true as any memory summoned from a long-past Christmas.

I’m child No. 4 in a four-child family, and when we were wee our family was the type that put Christmas presents under a Christmas tree. We lived in northwest Spokane in a house atop a steep hill where the distant field lights of Joe Albi Stadium could be seen from our living room window. When the stadium lights illuminated the night, the scene was mesmerizing, a word I didn’t know at the time.

Gifts started appearing a week or so before Christmas Day, and I’d get on my hands and knees and cram myself into the farthest crannies of the present pile to inspect each wrapped gift. I’d shake it, I’d balance it. I’d pester the gift-giver about what was inside.

A few days before Christmas Day, a new present appeared. It was twice as tall as I was. It was flared at the bottom and tapered at the top, and it leaned against the living room wall next to the tree. It was too big to fit under the tree — it was the largest gift that Christmas.

It was from my father and it was for me.

The gift was so out of scale to my tiny self that my tiny mind couldn’t fathom its possibilities. It was too tall for me to lift, but I squeezed and poked it enough to learn it was thoroughly solid and that it didn’t produce noise.

I was baffled, another word I didn’t know then.

I couldn’t pry information out of my father. He was pester-proof in those days — he had four kids, a time-consuming business, lawns that needed mowing, sidewalks that needed shoveling. He could shut down inquiries quickly.

He told me something like this: “You’ll find out on Christmas. You can wait.” And I think I remember him giving me an odd smile.

Christmas morning. I unwrapped the tall mystery present as my father looked on. The gift was an adult-size paddle for a boat. The conversation then went something like this:

Me: (clearly disappointed) What’s it for?

Dad: The boat.

Me: Anything else?

Dad: No. We’ll need a paddle if the motor isn’t working.

Me: So I’ll be the one using the paddle?

Dad: Not necessarily.

Me: Then why did you give me the paddle?

Dad: I had to give it to somebody.

My mother filled me in soon afterward.

“You need to learn that good things don’t always come in big packages,” she told me.

At the time, I had a grudging respect for my parents’ good intentions when it came to parenting, so I let them believe I had learned a valuable lesson about big and small, good and bad.

But why would I remember that gift among all the gifts from all the years? You, dear reader, must wonder sometimes why you remember one thing but not another.

When I was in my teens and became the last child in the house, I became my father’s companion to movies my mother refused to see, often comedies by the likes of Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Monty Python. My father and I watched the dark comedy “Harold and Maude” at the Magic Lantern Theatre in Spokane. Sometimes he’d stay up and we’d watch “Saturday Night Live” together.

The two of us sat in an otherwise empty Plaza Twin Theater in downtown Port Orchard in 2009 watching “Whatever Works,” a movie by Allen with Larry David in the lead role. It was the final film we saw where it was just the two of us.

Giving a 5-year-old an adult-size oar, and then explaining he had to give it to somebody, was the type of absurdity found in the comedies that made my father laugh. Perhaps I remember that paddle because it gave me an early glimpse of what my father found funny.

What we laugh at is essential to what makes us distinct human beings.

Or perhaps I remember because I expected good things to come in big packages.