Monday, May 14, 2007

The Bar Has Been Set

Since Mother's Day comes before Father's Day, the pressure was on Minh to "set the bar" for gift-giving. I made it pretty clear that I expected some type of acknowledgement, but that he could decide whether to keep it simple (just a card) or do something fancier.

He, of course, spent the past few weeks making sure my expectations were nice and low. Each mention of Mother's Day was met with jokes like "oh, is that coming up?" and "do I have to get you something?" Funny, funny man.

When I woke up Sunday morning and found a card and small, gift-wrapped box on the kitchen counter I was immediately moved to tears. It didn't matter what was in the box....just that he did something. The card was perfect--a funny one, not all flowery and poetic. And his note inside was obviously written with thought and care. But imagine my complete and utter surprise when I discovered that the gift box contained channel-set diamond hoop earrings. Holy crap!

The day itself was really wonderful. Tai and I walked around Smith College while Minh did about an hour of work. Then we all went out to lunch and stopped for coffee and a cookie (and some milk for Tai) on the way home. It was really fun spending time as a family of three outside of the house and not at Costco.

The bar has indeed been set quite high. Now I have about a month to figure out how to reciprocate. I have only two ideas thus far -- one that costs MUCH less than my earrings and one that costs MUCH more. The much more one ain't gonna happen, I'll tell you that. I know it's not all about price and it's the thought that counts and all that crap, but Minh really did put alot of thought (and money!) into this gift so now the pressure's on to come up with something that he'll enjoy as much as I enjoyed my card, gift, and family outing.

2 comments:

Dianna said...

Wow! Go Minh! :)
Happy First Mother's Day!

Unknown said...

Good job, Minh.

It was so much easier when we could just give each other mix tapes, wasn't it?