I’ll go with what I think was the best gift I have ever given, and it also ended up giving back to me. A bit of a backstory first. My mom would tell me that when I was little, I would take my blocks over to where she did her sewing and sit on the floor by her. She said I told her I was building a castle for her and that someday I would buy her a castle (my mom always loved castles).
Fast-forward to the mid-90’s and I was in Calgary for a conference just before Mother’s Day. I went into a store (I think it was called History Makers) and was looking around. They had some miniature castles on display, the kind of thing you would put on a display shelf in your living room. My mom had a shelf like that with a glass door because she liked to collect stuff like that. I saw the castles and thought it would make a great Mother’s Day gift because it would be kind of amusing since I could say that I kept my promise. I left the store and started walking down the street and then thought “yes, stupid, that would make a great gift”. Went back and bought Edinburgh Castle and my mom loved it.
Fast-forward to 2014 and my mom was dying. I was able to make it back to Winnipeg a few days before she died and see her while she was still conscious and semi-lucid. After she died, we were at my parent’s house and my sister took the castle from the shelf and gave it to me saying “you should have this”. To this day it sits proudly on display in my home. I’ve told my daughter that she’s free to pick it up and look at it, but she won’t touch it because she knows how special it is to me and she’s afraid she’ll break it.