Elizabeth A. Leib

by Elizabeth A. Leib

Fluffy Phoebe Lindsey Leib, a gift from dear friend Susan

This work is dedicated to the Public Domain.

You just know times are changing when the front page of your favorite newspaper covers the story of the President-Elect’s weekly YouTube address and you skip the article because you saw the video. Climate change, the global financial crisis, two US wars, and everywhere jobs are evaporating. We’re doing what we can to adjust. Almost everyone I know is either looking for work or insecure about their job. Creative Loafing is in Chapter 11 and Hillsborough County Schools have declared a deep hiring freeze.

I pulled my retirement funds out of the stock market. We canceled our Sunday New York Times. I traded in my car in favor of one that is more fuel efficient and we’ve ended the habit of casual eating out. I’m eyeing the backyard with its sandy soil and thinking maybe better to try hydroponic gardening.

As a parent there are benefits to being Jewish this time of year. MitzvahBoy is accustomed to receiving gifts under $5 on each of the eight days of Hanukkah so his holiday won’t be much affected by our budget cutting. He noted recently that those who observe the Santa myth get more presents. Oh well, I said, we’re Jewish.

For years I’ve struggled with this season of compulsory gift giving. There are gifts that can never be repaid and gifts intended to establish bonds that I’d prefer to refuse. I’ve been interested in authenticity at the expense of ritual. But that may be changing thanks to my new best friend the book “The Gift” by Lewis Hyde. Hyde writes in the introduction, “A gift is a thing we do not get by our own efforts. We cannot buy it; we cannot acquire it through an act of will. It is bestowed upon us.” For me this idea is helpful; true gifts aren’t acquisitions and they aren’t motivated by any thought of getting something back.

In the first chapter of “The Gift” Hyde writes “Another way to describe the motion of the gift is to say that a gift must always be used up, consumed, eaten…This, then is how I use “consume” to speak of a gift-a gift is consumed when it moves from one hand to another with no assurance of anything in return. There is little difference, therefore, between its consumption and its movement. A market exchange has an equilibrium or stasis; you pay to balance the scale. But when you give a gift there is momentum, and the weight shifts from body to body.”

So in that spirit I offered my mother-in-law a potato as a birthday present. A bit unorthodox, but appropriate - she’s always encouraging us to eat vegetables so I gave her an organic sweet potato from the Sweetwater Farm. She reciprocated by bringing a delicious sweet potato casserole to thanksgiving dinner. Encouraged by this small success I spent the long Thanksgiving weekend making a stew. Two days of boiling and soaking and chopping yielded two pots full. I gave away quart baggies labeled “Elizabeth’s Kosher Turkey Stew.”

Ready for another opportunity involving food-gifts, I agreed to help MitzvahBoy’s reading teacher with a Hanukkah presentation for his class. Nevermind that the one and only time I made latkes they were horrid, heavy greasy starchy blobs. I’m moving ahead with confidence thanks to the latke making advice of the expert Jodi Ray.

I’m looking forward to a season of experimenting with consumable gifts: food, books, ideas, time. Friends can look forward to gifts from the Leib family of fresh roasted coffee from Café Kili, homemade cookies, time together lighting Hanukkah candles, and blog posts exploring the complexities of gift giving. With any luck I’ll navigate more comfortably and with increasing skill the rituals of this holiday season.