What was the real value?

Between the arthritis and the increasing cold days I have had to reconsider my winter weather gear.

Between my hoodies, my playa coat, and my new light wool half trench (an amazing thrift store find by Lee), and my heavy wool pea-coat I've got the outer wear covered. And I've got the best wool hat.

That's about where my reasonable, useful winter clothing gets a bit sparse. I had several long sleeve shirts and I can't seem to find most of them. I've also lost a pair of relatively new jeans.

I have several gloves.....1 wool open fingered glove with removable mitt, 1 thermo-resistant work glove, and 1 pair hunters gloves that basically so thick, they keep me from being able to move my fingers at all.

So it occurred to me to find some more...useful gloves.

The best gloves I have ever used were brown suede driving gloves that were given to me one Christmas by my first wife's mother. At the time I thought it was a adult equivalence of grandparents buying their grand kids clothes. It's a thoughtful but not well thought out gift. They were, however, amazing. Well made, warm with out being thick, comfortable to wear and I really liked how the sleeve of the glove flared out instead of tightening down. I thought, with a slightly sadistic glee, that I had gotten a gift that was bought thoughtlessly that turned out to be amazing. It was like winning the bad gift's lottery. They were just right.

So I fired up the interblags. After I entered the complicated and detailed input that all computer-geeks are required to enter before doing anything mundane on a computer, I found those gloves.

It was then that I realized that what I had not received (did I really use between to start both my first and second sentence above? *sigh*) was a thoughtless but amazing gift.

These gloves were coach brand suede gloves. $98.00 dollar driving gloves. Now, don't get me wrong. I was not impressed that they were that expensive. They did not suddenly have more value as an object. It did however tell me a different story about the gifting process.



My first ex-wife's mother was a teacher, her husband was a fire chief. Neither of this professions amount to much money but they had made some useful investments and carefully saved their money. They are not people who purchase $98 dollar driving gloves flippantly.

This tells me that no only was it a carefully considered gift but it was likely something I needed and would be grateful for. Don't get me wrong, I was, but there was a edge of vindication there.


The weird part, for me, was I could imagine that if I had known how much effort was put into their purchase and gifting, I would have had a stronger emotional attachment to them. I probably would have not cut the fingers out of them for costuming purposes.