I have given gifts to people that seemed to get a lukewarm reception. Either I wondered whether it arrived, or the thank you never materialized in either ink or decibels. 

Here is a sweet three minute video about giving that resonates for me. Having been cast as every character except the dog, I have felt stingy, cynical, entitled, magnanimous, regretful, thankful, prayerful, joyful. But if I can reel myself back far enough I realize that the antithesis- instantaneous and predictable response- leaves no wiggle room. I become a monkey in a cage... press the lever, get a grape. Offer a gift, receive appropriate and timely thanks. 

But God has higher aspirations for me that a six foot wire enclosure. Benevolence ignites a cascade of interactions that can be neither predicted nor traced. Last night John told me that someone approached him over the weekend to express her gratitude for songs I wrote three decades ago. She played them as a little girl and now she plays them for her children. Who knows where that music traveled in half a lifetime? 

Marriage is a hotbed of inequity. Despite my efforts to keep score for the first few years, oh, all right, first many years, the ebb and flow between John and I vacillates more than the stock exchange on Friday. One minute I give more than I should, according to some arbitrary standard that exists between my ears. Or I am gifted more lavishly than I deserve, as measured by a similarly random scale of equity. 

But the illusion only lasts a short while. By the time the game is over and the real story begins I will be saying what my mother whispered a few hours before her eyes closed for the very last time. 

"I have everything I need."