Twinkle: The Nature of Giving

Can we talk for just a minute about the nature of giving?

My MIL is throwing this shower for one of Mr. Twinkle's cousins who's getting married this summer at the Henry Clay. The shower has 7 hostesses and 50 guests and is at Norton Commons...it's basically going to be the sort of nightmare event that we all hate and to which we are morally opposed, where you waste a Saturday and there's no alcohol and you end up sitting next to someone's 80-year-old great aunt, and there are three dreadful hours of watching the bride-to-be open gift after monotonous gift. All this will go down the same Saturday of the Cherokee Art Fair and other highly preferable pre-Derby festivities, if I'm not mistaken.

We were discussing the shower, and my MIL said, "Don't even ask me about the hostess gift."

First of all, where I come from, a hostess gift is one given to the hostess(es), for hosting the party in the first place. A bottle of wine, a bouquet of flowers, a cute tea towel...all would be perfect gifts for someone hosting a party. So at first I thought maybe my MIL was displeased about the gift that the bride-to-be was giving her as a thank-you for hosting the party. It was soon established that she was referring to the gift that the hostesses are giving to the bride-to-be, which isn't technically a hostess gift at all.

The gift that my MIL was referring to is apparently an extravagant pair of shoes for the bride to wear on her wedding day.

Now I don't know anything about these shoes, or what they cost or who makes them. Based on my MIL's righteous indignation, I'm guessing that they're of the $700 Manolo variety, but needless to say, MIL is not happy about writing a $100 check for 1/7 of the check to Nordstrom or wherever for a pair of shoes that she considers far too extravagant.

The irony to me is that my MIL would have no problem writing a check for the same amount, if it were going toward a KitchenAid mixer or some other practical (yet also extravagant) household item. A gift is a gift, I think, and it's more about the recipient's pleasure than it is about your personal opinions on the matter. If my MIL is writing the same amount for a check either way, why does she care if it's for a pair of shoes or a kitchen item or a place setting of china or something else? Who is she to dictate the desires of other people? I have aesthetically disagreed with the contents of many a wedding registry, but it wasn't really my place to criticize, was it?

I have no problem with Mr. Twinkle's cousin wanting an expensive pair of shoes for her wedding day. It isn't as if she mortgaged her home to get these shoes, or allowed a b*stard child to starve so she could buy them (she doesn't have children, b*stard or otherwise, for the record). All she did was fall in love with a pair of shoes--and who hasn't done that? She isn't even buying them for herself; she just wants them and the other hostesses of this shower have generously decided to give her something she truly wants, which I think is a beautiful thing.

I'm sure if it were up to my MIL, the bride would wear a practical and comfortable pair of Easy Spirits beneath her wedding gown. And if it were up to MIL, Mr. Twinkle and I would eat in the kitchen instead of the dining room--she has always pushed for us to eat in the kitchen. And we wouldn't own--much less use--a single place setting of Herend's Rothschild Bird, which she also disapproves of, and considers frivolous and "not what she would choose." And no one would ever have more than one child, and if they did have more than one, the children would be spaced at a manageable 5-year age difference so that they'd never be in college at the same time. And it's too bad for all of us who can't run our own lives that no one has appointed her absolute dictator over everyone yet, isn't it?

I guess when I give a gift, I think there's joy in giving someone what he or she truly wants--joy for him/her and even more joy for me. MIL is utterly joyless, and judgmental, and righteously indignant about everything, so how could she find joy in giving? Anyway, I can't wait to see the shoes...I hope they are doozies. And I can't wait to see the face of the bride--and my MIL--when those shoes come out at the shower. I know my MIL won't be able to hide her disdain, and I really hope that doesn't diminish the bride's joy.