Senior Gift Giving: Mission Impossible

My good friends, Irene and Lee, celebrated their anniversary yesterday. Unbelievably, they are married more than 50 years (I still have photos of us in bikinis at Club Med. That's a blast from the past). I emailed them with elderly jokes, i.e., “You have already celebrated silver and gold anniversaries. This one can’t be paper or tchotchke. It could be bland foods or MiraLAX.” Perhaps that wasn’t my cleverest missive, but I deserve credit for not going right to low hanging fruit.

I thought about them happily all day. It’s a real treat to have friends for a million years. They knew me when my neck looked like a neck is supposed to look. We traveled together as young marrieds. They really liked my first husband but my second…. not so much. It’s tricky with 2 couples - there are so many ways it can go wrong.

I’m at a loss for the right gift. Gifts are tricky. For my birthday, I asked my daughter Steph to go through my storage locker with me. Instead, she bought me under eye concealer for the dark circles.

I checked The Knot for ideas – one suggestion was a 20-piece food storage set; another was an air fryer (what’s an air fryer?) Heading into the sixth decade of marriage, it would probably be safe to send a monogramed gift, towels maybe. I ruled out dinner at a noisy restaurant.

I seriously think, at this stage of life, the best gift is to take something away. I’ll bet they would love to get rid of the accumulation of years. Maybe I’ll offer to clean their pantry (without scolding about expired products) or better yet, match their Tupperware bottoms to the tops and toss the remainders. That would be a gift.