So, There Was This Gift…
If God loves a cheerful giver, and His word tells us that He does, then I know He loves my mom.
She’s earned the nickname “Nana Claus” in our family for good reason: She seems to work a special kind of magic when she hears of something any of us would like to have. It very clearly makes her happy to give us things we want, especially things she can imagine us enjoying. Even if she’s supposedly “done” shopping when she gets wind of such things, she tends to make it her mission to deliver anyway.
She loves to see us love what she’s given.
All of this has become even more true as we’ve all grown older and harder to shop for, not to mention less likely to ask for “fun” things. For instance, this past Christmas, I “might” have asked my mom for a coffee pot and pajamas. While those things certainly set me up for enjoyment at this point in my life, I know they probably don’t exactly qualify as “fun” …
It’s not just me, though. Even Ian, the “baby” of our house at almost twenty-one, has become a challenge when it comes to gift giving. Working dark to dark every day makes wintertime fun hard for him to come by. So, when I heard him casually mention what a good time he’d had playing ping pong on a recent visit to a friend’s place, I took note. Nana Claus had just asked me about Christmas gift ideas for him.
Since considering not only if, but where large objects might fit around here always matters, I bounced (pun totally intended) the thought off Tommy first:
Could we sacrifice space in the garage for a ping pong table? We agreed we’d make it work, so I volleyed the idea over to Nana via text message link. I’m not exaggerating when I say that her reply came mere minutes later, accompanied by a screenshot documenting that she’d already clicked “Add to Cart” and checked out!
During our internal preapproval process, Tommy mentioned two stipulations for his affirmative vote: That the table should, (1.) fold up, and (2.) have wheels. The one Nana ordered satisfied both requirements, so in my mind, I pictured something nice and manageable.
Her order confirmation had indicated a delivery date a week or so in the future, and life moved on. I hadn’t thought much about it again until she forwarded an e-mail confirming the exact date. Something about the language sounded a little different than the usual UPS or Fed Ex delivery notification, and she asked if I thought it meant she needed to be present to receive it. I agreed it might, so she arranged her schedule to make herself available on the designated day.
“If it’s on a dolly,” she said, “I wonder if I could have them bring it in through my front door?”
If this paints her as overthinking the details, then it’s only fair to also point out my tendency to underthink them.
I usually let things like this just happen, and then find (sometimes unconventional?) ways to handle them - if I have to. I’ve tugged, lugged, and wiggled many huge things from, through, and to ridiculous places by myself: Obnoxiously large recliner chair; Peloton bike; full room-size rolls of ripped-out carpeting (I kind of felt like something out of The Godfather Part II that day…) I say these things not to brag about my super-human strength or anything like that, but more as a confession of my extreme impatience: When I want something done – I really don’t like waiting for help.
So, I met her query with a totally unconcerned response: “It can’t be that hard. If it goes on the porch, I’ll get it from there.”
It folded. It had wheels. How hard could that be?
“It weighs 163-pounds….” She countered.
Hmm. Alrighty, then. We’d figure out how to handle that - if we had to.
As timing would have it, the delivery window landed on a day and time that found Ian at home earlier than usual, packing to head out of town on a trip. My mom lives directly across the street from us, so she and I both hoped that should the delivery arrive before he left, it would at least be inconspicuous.
Fortunately, it didn’t. Because it wasn’t…
He must certainly have passed the unmarked full-size freight truck before he’d even made it out of town, because its arrival only overlapped his departure by minutes. Passing it likely didn’t catch his attention, but the way it rolled up in front of Nana’s house – a cacophony of air brakes and four-way flashers cutting through a quiet, gray, small-town December afternoon – surely would have.
Peeking through my window blinds, I watched. Two full-grown men got out and lifted the truck’s rear gate, and I suddenly began to regret my promise to “handle it” – from anywhere.
They did NOT appear to be having fun as they wrestled a really large, awkwardly narrow and tall (and apparently heavy) box from the truck deck onto a commercial dolly… I wonder, at that moment, who was hoping hardest that the thing really would fit through Nana’s front door: Nana? Them? Or me?
I couldn’t see the door from my vantage point, but I could see the box and the men: One holding each end. I held my breath as the front man, then part of the box, slid from my view… and until all of the box, then the back man did, too. Was it really through her front door? Had I escaped needing to come up with a way to “handle it”? When one man returned to the truck, retrieved a clipboard, and headed back toward the house, I finally exhaled.
It was in!
And right inside that front door it stayed, until Christmas when Nana Claus called Ian over to surprise him with an unexpected gift.
Both the surprise and the gift were a total success. Ian and Tommy eventually wrestled it back out the door and across the road to the garage, where set-up then began...
It does have wheels, and it does fold up. And it is, indeed, an official regulation-size ping pong table – which, it turns out, is at least triple the size my completely-clueless-about-ping-pong mind had envisioned!
If you drive by our house any time soon, see a driveway full of vehicles, and think we must be having a party, we probably aren’t. Instead, it’s just every one of our vehicles – outside. But don’t worry: The very large ping pong table is locked away, warm and dry, in the main garage bay. It’ll eventually have to move to a more appropriate spot. But for now, the inconvenience of a really cold car has seemed worth allowing it to occupy that space.
On Christmas night, some of Ian’s twenty-something-year-old friends came over to break it in. At one point, Tommy walked outside, returned, and said of the laughter he could hear through the closed garage doors, “They sound like a bunch of four-year-olds having a sleepover out there!”
And whether courtesy of visitors or just those of us who live here, the laughter has continued on many nights since.
Skill levels vary:
Tommy, as with almost all things athletic, is annoyingly adept at it. (He’s just not that much fun to play at anything, unless one enjoys losing!) He makes blocking and returning a ping pong ball look as effortless as he made blocking 300-pound college football players look 30-years-ago.
Ian, although not quite the “natural” his dad is at such things, runs a close second. Which, combined with his determination, makes him an opponent to watch out for. (Do you know what kind of sound a ping pong ball makes when it ricochets off your trachea? I do!)
Brandi sometimes even comes back “home” to play, and she is an entirely unique phenomenon! Also an athlete like her dad, and (courtesy of his DNA) sporting arms that often make shopping for long sleeves a sport all its own, she can reach and return a flying ball from angles that don’t even make sense. Come to think of it, she plays ping pong very similarly to the way she earned an All-State volleyball title… I feel like I need to limber up (and consider safety glasses) before lining up across from her!
Even Drake has found his place in the action. Did you know that, with a training collar and a bag of tiny treats, a two-year-old black lab can learn to retrieve a ping pong ball from under a boat, from inside a shoe, from the coil of an extension cord (beneath a sawhorse!), or from just about any other place it might land in an 80-foot garage? Me neither! Now just one question remains: Can he also learn not to bite down quite so hard when he does, or should I place ping pong balls on Amazon auto-ship…?
Now that I’ve covered the whole family, I should probably also try to explain - me.
They are all (including Drake) natural athletes. I, on the other hand, am not. I can work the words “bouncing” and “volleying” into the telling of this story way more easily than I can do those things with the actual paddles and balls…
They do try to help me:
“You don’t have to swing so hard.”
“But wait, I didn’t mean just stand there and hope it hits your paddle!”
“Back up!”
“You have to let it bounce once – you can’t just smack it back like that!” (In case you wondered how it ends up under a boat!)
“You only have to swing once… How is it even possible to swing that fast, that many times!?”
“You’re allowed to keep your feet on the ground!”
Laughter does ensue. It sure had on the night when Tommy, regarding my efforts, declared to the rest of them, “This is like US trying to WRITE…!” That point went to him. Ping pong is NOT my gifting...
But it sure is a fun gift.
An unexpected connection point. A welcome temptation away from working at something all the time, as we most often tend to do.
I’ve yet to not find a taker upon asking the room at large, “Wanna play ping pong?” (Add that to the ever-growing list of things I once never imagined hearing myself say.) In fact, Brandi recently laughed out loud when she dropped in and found her dad, Drake, and me around the table, and Ian not even home.
It's also a great reminder that I don’t have to be good at something to allow myself to enjoy it, unless I make that a prerequisite. I love seeing and hearing my people laugh, even if (in good fun) it’s at me. And I certainly love the conversations that bubble up, ones that otherwise might never, because we’re gathered around a table.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll practice up and surprise them all one day soon… Or maybe not.
Instead, maybe I’ll just embrace the fun moments while they last; contribute in my own “unique” way when I get the chance; and recognize the true blessing in watching others, especially those I love, use and enjoy the gifts they have received.
If Nana listens really closely on quiet nights to come, I bet she’ll be able to hear the sound of laughter coming from the garage across the street…
It makes me think:
The giver… Seeing the gift used and bringing joy. Not only to the life of the one who received it, but also – in unique and unexpected ways - to lives that intersect with that one.
To the giver, does that maybe become the best gift?
I hope so…