The Gift

My wife deserved the perfect birthday present. That's not what I bought.

- Ian Brown

IT WAS MY WIFE'S 59th birthday. Fifty-nine is not a "special" birthday, like 18 or 50 or 90, but it is one you want to take seriously. That's because it is the last year of a life anyone can, however delusionally, consider themselves not old.

It is not an age you want to be messing up on, gift-wise. Perhaps I was out of practice, thanks to the no-roaming-the-store-for-ideas shopping deprivations of COVID. I considered a new blender, because we need one, but you do not want to be giving someone a blender to "celebrate" turning 59. Someone who is turning 59 wants to believe in the future, in psychological autonomy and the possibility of the unplanned.

Shopping online, however, requires a more decisive mindset than I possess. You have to know what you want before you know what you want. I had decided on a range of presents from me and the dog and my son. The dog had chosen to give my wife a subscription to the Flower of the Month Club. The boy would proffer a super-light walking jacket from Arc'teryx, the women's version of one of my own my wife had taken to borrowing. Those gifts were inspired.

I HADN'T JUST BOUGHT THE WRONG GIFT. I WAS IN THE WRONG STORE ENTIRELY.

It was my gift that would fail. I had been casting about for a present. I surveyed a lot of jewellery, but nothing spoke to me in my price range. Jewellery is a fallback gift anyway, and fallback gifts are an admission of defeat. Surely I can figure out what my partner wants after living with her for more than three decades. So I told myself.