Gifting Etiquette

R suggested I write about this and so here I am.

About a month ago, we finalized my in-laws' trip to visit us. This meant we had to let our dear nanny go after she helped take care of our little one for almost three years. Yes all good things have to come to an end, and R and I wanted to give her something fitting as a token of our appreciation. We decided that since the in-laws were coming over anyway an apt gift would be something from the homeland. Now that we are responsible adults, we do have to set budgets for even tokens of appreciations, and so we decided on a good number to aim for. We thought a combination of sari and/or jewelry would give the personal touch while at the same time last her a lifetime. Having made the decision (I must say, it is not always so unanimous between R and I), I picked up the phone to make the request of my in-laws.

Let me take a moment to describe my in-laws here. They are the most caring, loving and ruled-by-logic kind of couple I have seen of their generation. Being parent-less myself, I have in these 15 years of my marriage, developed a sincere endearment for my in-laws and I must say I am treated as their own daughter at any point in our relationship. So I am allowed the liberties that in my acquaintances, few daughters-in-law have, and to that I am forever grateful. So the blog here is a snippet of such a liberty :-)

Going back to my narration about the nanny, gift, in-laws.....

The initial reaction when I mentioned about this interest of ours, was a heartwarming agreement from their side as well. Then came the budget issue, when they listened to the amount we had decided. A pregnant pause followed after which my m-i-l suggested in her gentle cajoling/reasoning way that there are many choices available for much less. I was told, just as a parent would advise their daughter that the token is important and not the amount that we budget towards it. But I failed to flip the same argument back at my in-laws in trying to explain the same thing, i. e., it is hard to put an amount to such good efforts by the nanny who we thought went ways and means beyond what we had set as our expectations towards care giving of our children. So we finally left the matter by sticking to our guns and decided to delegate my husband with this as he was going to be in India anyway on official capacity.

MISTAKE # 2! I say this because, even though R meant well and agreed to the cost evaluation (or the inability to do so) of the nanny's efforts, we are still talking R here. Give him an idea, a budget, and he will run (like Forrest Gump) towards the goalpost with little distraction. Well, R did get the gifts for the nanny (check), did stay at or above :) budget (check again) but I was (as I am sure R would say, all women) hoping he would have at least have gone to couple departments in at least the same store, to check what fashions might we have to choose from. (We are talking India here, where fashion changes like the winter weather in MI!). But NOOO, he went almost Spock-like (I can so visualize this) asked a worker in the store for where he might find saris in the price range we had thought of, picked his pieces in less than 5 selections that were shown (did I say <5?), and was out the door, checking off his to-do list and actually quite proud about it :-) True we got what w(h)e wanted, nothing extraordinary for the money we spent, but standard fare. In the end he was happy, nanny was (I hope) happy, in-laws too for that matter. But did I learn my lesson (again!)? I think I will do this differently if there is a next time ........

Case in point...

I took this episode to my close friend, P, who is my sounding board for many things in my life. I feel very comfortable in talking to her about anything under the sun and feel like she will give me a perspective to it the way I can digest it. Funnily she had had the same issue, of having to gift her nanny for efforts she says included helping her husband complete biz school with her working full time. She felt that she could not put a dollar amount to the way her nanny had stood by her family. But she dealt with it differently from me. She knew that her parents would react the way my in-laws did. Rather than delegate this to them, she took matters in her own hand and got what she thought was appropriate. And like she ended it, 'Simple, that is how I do things'.

Hmm, and here I thought I was trying to change my ways, esp learning to delegate, sigh :(