In my immediate family, we no longer give gifts for the holidays. The boys are all grown up and far away, and I no longer know what they need or want, what size they wear, what products they use. Instead, we do a simple gift exchange, orchestrated by our systems engineer son, with each of us buying one gift for one family member. Simple, easy, fun to watch (in person or via Skype) each person gets one special thing.
In my extended family, we long ago gave up gifts and concentrate on trying to get together whenever we can, which isn’t very often these days with siblings in Philadelphia (me), Dayton, Ohio, Pittsburgh and Jupiter, Fla. For a while my mother tried to keep up with birthday and holiday gifts for kids, grandkids and now great-grandkids. And then she just gave up — until this year when she decided to bestow a large check on each of us; a very large check. My brother, her personal accountant, tried to convince her to save the money for future emergencies, but she would not be dissuaded. “My goal,” she told him, shortly after her 86th birthday, “is to die with one check left in my checkbook and just enough money to pay for my funeral expenses.”
I’m not sure who came up with the idea of using our sudden windfall for a joint trip with mom, but I do know that each of us has tried for many years to convince her that she should take a trip to Italy to re-visit the family home where she lived as a child before coming to the U.S. as a 7-year-old. To say we’ve never succeeded would be an understatement; she not only would…not…discuss…it….but would shut us down completely, no discussion about it thank-you.
So her children went instead, even one of her grandsons, to visit the little mountain town, the old family home, the Italian relatives and cousins (who still remembered her), to get a feeling for her heritage, and in turn, ours. But she would never accompany us, always interested in the photos and stories we came back with, but always insisting she didn’t want to go. Until one of my siblings came up with the idea of using our recent Christmas checks to take a joint trip to Italy with mom.
At first it was a fun discussion, not at all serious. But we kept talking and making imaginary plans, and thinking about what we would do if she would go, even though we knew it could never possibly happen at 86 if we hadn’t been able to convince her at 40, 50, 60 or 70. Then someone started sketching out an itinerary for what we would do if she would go. And someone came up with a plan of attack about how we could try to get her to go; it would start with our oldest sibling, the daughter she was closest to, the one she usually took advice from. Then the follow-up would come from our youngest brother, the baby, the one she found hardest to refuse. Until somewhere along the line we realized she was actually listening, and hadn’t said “no.”
Now our starstruck idea has turned into daily calls, e-mails and texts among the four of us, making plans, searching for villas that accommodate nine, writing to relatives, and actually buying airline tickets to go to Italy, in September, with our mother, to visit her family home and the villages of her parents and grandparents. To say that we are shocked is an understatement. Not just shocked, but thrilled, excited, over-the-moon.
To take this unlikely trip means that we will each give up other 2013 vacations with our own children and friends. But how often does a family come together for a major trip with mom in her 80s (god willing she’ll be 87 when we go) and the rest of us in our 50s and 60s? We will miss our dad, gone three years now, but we will not miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to not only travel together for two weeks but to get to know our mother (and probably each other) in a way we never thought possible.
Why now? We don’t know and we don’t care. We are just very grateful for the Christmas gift she gave us, without knowing what she was doing, for spouses and partners who are enthusiastically willing to go with us, that we all get along well enough to do this, and, lastly, for the sedatives that will allow us to get her on the plane despite her lifelong crippling fear of flying over the ocean.
* Lee Miller welcomes responses. Please email them to leemiller229@gmail.com
Lee Miller began her writing career with four books about Pennsylvania/east coast wines and the creation of Wine East magazine. She then went on to found the Chaddsford Winery with her husband Eric, where she turned her pen to promotion, advertising, public relations and marketing of their successful business venture for 30 years. Last year Lee co-wrote the new wine book, “The Vintner’s Apprentice” with Eric, and retired from the Chaddsford Winery to pursue other interests. She is currently working on a book about her life in the wine industry and exploring the retirement life. Her goal in writing a column for Chadds Ford Live is to generate dialogue and elicit reader response.
