The Ogg

I have always been terrible at receiving gifts. As a child, my difficulty would manifest itself as my being spoiled: gifts would appear, and I would frown, even throw temper tantrums, ‘this isn’t what I wanted!’ It is not the givers’ fault, they can’t know that I was ruined by a gift giver with whom they would be hard pressed to compete.

As an adult, I have been taught well to have good manners; I am gracious and pleasant, I smile and think back over the process and the importance of the ritual of giving and receiving gifts and how sharing is a way for us all to express our humanity. In our rush to keep up with life, we don’t all have the time to pick the perfect gift for each of our loved ones, but even a simple gift says something. With this in mind, and well aware of my own shortcomings when it comes time to pick a gift for someone else, I do my best to be gracious.

But, in fact, I dread receiving gifts. I live in fear that in the split second after the gift is open I will hurt someone’s feelings with an involuntary eye movement, glancing quickly down or to the side before looking the giver in the eye and offering my thanks. In that briefest of moments, I still find myself removed, questioning the necessity of the expenditure, or even, I am shamed to admit, the quality of the product, but I know these thoughts are just adult manifestations of that childish tantrum. I am gracious, but it is a learned reaction, and rarely spontaneous. I find myself, instead, removed and thinking back.

Two weeks ago now, we lost my Uncle Don. As a young boy, I remember this strange and marvelous bachelor uncle who would arrive at family gatherings like Gandalf the Grey and immediately be set upon by all the children in the area. He never fought this attention, unlike the others of the ‘grown up’ persuasion; he would revel in it and give us all his time and careful, honest attention for as long as we required it.

He was a good man who had been forced to overcome challenges. From a minor birth complication in infancy to a learning disorder in his school years he was stalled a bit, a situation complicated even more by losing his father and having to grow up a bit quicker than he had hoped. In the end, he never followed the path that many others do, into a routine of marriage, static career and suburban ‘normalcy’. He served in the navy, worked for the university, but eventually settled into a life of occasional odd jobs and a series of inexpensive ‘home-like situations’ as opposed to the house, the car and the 2.5 kids that so many of us seem to seek.

He was creative and very good with his hands. He became a well loved and excellent teacher in the Boy Scouts. He was a ‘Mountain Man’, joining with a group of others who reenacted frontier era camping from the flintlock musket to the handmade clothes; in fact, the last time I spoke with him, he said that he and his group were planning to ride and camp along ‘The Continental Divide’ (aka, ‘The Great Divide’).

He had an uncanny knack for recycling (before it was fashionable) and could piece together just about anything one could imagine out of the odds and ends that made their way onto the grounds of his various compounds, storage sheds, campsites and trailers. He built a car, not once, but twice, out of spare parts from other vehicles, wood, scraps and even bits of worn-out appliances. Not ‘go-carts’, mind you, but street legal, registered and inspected ‘Ogg-mobiles’ (as in Donald Ogg) that traveled far and wide and provided, I’m sure, many a chuckle and smile, and perhaps, even a bit of admiration and envy along the way.

One Christmas, I’d say that I was about 7 or 8; there among the shiny papers and gaudy ribbons was a simple metal box, a gift from my Uncle Don. Like its contents, the box was fashioned by hand, cut with tin snips and folded to fit together like a shoebox. Inside were a series of puzzles and a handwritten note explaining rules. The puzzles ranged from a simple pile of nails with one nailed into a block of wood (the object is to balance all of the loose nails on to the fixed one, this puzzle alone took days for my brother and me to decipher), to a pair of horseshoes joined at the ends by welded-on lengths of chain with ring around the narrow part of the chains that could be removed and replaced without breaking a weld (although we considered that method many times in our journey to discover how). There were many others as well that, all told, provided hours of entertainment and joy over the course of the following weeks, months, even years, as they came back out to challenge new friends with their deceptive simplicity. Simple handmade puzzles that undoubtedly came together out of his legendary piles of ‘junk’ that my parents and his other siblings (unlike we, the nephews) simply couldn’t seem to understand were obviously piles of treasure. Simple puzzles that took time for us to solve and took time for him to fashion; even in his absence from us then, his attention spoke...speaks...volumes.

That precious box of puzzles is easily at the top of a very short list of presents I can even remember from my childhood. Uncle Don was not a wealthy man in the conventional sense, but he had a wealth of time and with that commodity, he was the most generous man I’ve ever known.

As I am now rapidly approaching fatherhood, I (and we all) would do well to remember his lesson: it’s not the gift that counts, it is the giving.

And please, if you should happen to give me a gift, and you do see that split second glance to the side, down, or even out across the Great Divide, please, don’t take it personally. It’s not your fault; anyone would be hard pressed to compete.

Thanks again for the giving, Uncle Don.