Hello, my friend!
Is holiday marketing starting earlier and earlier? This year I saw my first holiday ad on October 17. It did get me thinking about the holidays, and the things we give each other.
↓ In today’s email:
- This week’s inspiration: The gifts that never wear out
- Latest blog post: What Does It Mean to Build Your Blood?
- What I’m reading: My son’s copy of The Great Gatsby
This Week’s Inspiration: The gifts that never wear out
In the Price household, we encourage our kids to make their presents. These have ranged from DJ sessions from a cool girlfriend, a funny movie, fabulous paintings by Ava, haikus, to the occasional J-Pon (Julien Coupon) for things like unloading the dishwasher and foot rubs that invariably never happen. (This year I told him I want two personal training J-Pons.)
When the kids buy gifts, they should be thoughtful and inexpensive. One example: Emmanuel found the perfect book for my husband in a small bookstore in Japan. Sometimes their gifts are actually letters. I prefer those because they never wear out and live in a small drawer accompanied by fine chocolate. For when sad days arrive, they greet me.
Gifting is a language. Noticing what someone might like, from the practical to the extravagant. It’s also about caring and paying attention.
My best girlfriend Vincent Renou makes divine ceramics. For elaborate dinner parties to quotidian fried eggs and toast, we eat off his plates. Check out his IG @frenchg465. Another ceramicist friend, Mel, makes fabulous cups. I’m scheming for a set to replace the machine-made latte mugs we bought long ago.
Things born of human imagination, thoughtfulness, and creativity give us a soulful connection to an object, and also its creator. Even if she’s no longer here.
Case in point: the carpet in my office was recently appraised by a rug dealer across Bellevue. I had no intention of selling it. I just wanted to know more.
He said it was made of low-pile Afghan wool. The red and coral came from pomegranate dye, the yellow from turmeric, and even the cream was a vegetable dye made from onion. Most likely, he said, one woman in Persia made this carpet, and her life unfolded as she wove it. Perhaps in this corner, he showed me, her daughter got married. Perhaps in that one, she was grieving the death of her father. He said, “part of her energy lives on in the rug.”
Then he gestured toward the middle of the rug, awash in paisleys. This symbol, he said, “is about fertility.” I looked at him, agog. For 20 years, women have been coming to me hoping to get pregnant. I had no idea this symbolism was right under my feet all along.
When you’re shopping for the holidays, keep a keen eye on what your beloved might want. Perhaps it’s something you can create. And if not, perhaps it can be made uniquely by other human hands.
Latest Blog Post
What Does It Mean to Build Your Blood?
Doctors of Chinese medicine have a lot to say about what you eat.
This week’s post looks at what we mean by “Blood” in Chinese medicine, and why autumn is a time to pay attention to it. There’s food involved, of course: cooked greens with a squeeze of lemon, black and red beans, and a slow-cooked stew.
There’s also the question of how we live. Someone asks, “Could you whip up guacamole for 20 people tonight?” Younger you: “Let me see what I can do!” Older you: “Oh, honey. No.”
Everyone has their own ideas about what to eat. If something doesn’t fit your values or your plate, no stress. Just keep it moving.
What I’m Reading This Week
My son’s copy of The Great Gatsby
Every year I read The Great Gatsby. Every time there’s something new. This year, the copy I picked up belonged to one of my sons, with his notes in the margins.
With time vertically stacked, him at 15 and me at 52, it felt we were reading it together.
When the narrator, Nick Carraway, describes Tom Buchanan as one of the best football players ever at New Haven, my son’s note asks, “Is this high school or college?” (Darling!) But what he does get is: “Tom’s an asshole!” 100% true. 😂
What I noticed this year is that all the main characters live in the past. Even the telling of Gatsby itself is Nick looking back years later.
The gangster Meyer Wolfshiem seems to live in the present. He tells Nick: “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
It seems most of us live in the past or the future. In rereading, I’m looking backward and forward, inside and out. Maybe this is the aim of art. What do you think?
Dr. Catherine
Photograph by ohlamour studio.
Cover art by Francis Cugat, 1925, via Wikimedia Commons.