Harry Trumps Harper

I think I might have mentioned this before but, in light of recent events, it bears repeating. Stated as a question it’s simply this: what the hell do you give an elderly person who pretty much already has everything he or she could possibly want? Do you give ‘em tchotchkes they feel obligated to put on display? Tablecloths; napkins; or subscriptions to TV Guide? Gift baskets with fattening foodstuffs or fresh fruit that inevitably goes bad?

This is really a trick question because the recent event I’m talking about was the 94th birthday of a mother-figure I’ve treasured since 1971. So for 40 years I’ve been giving her all of the above plus other perishables or sometimes not-so-cheap tokens of my love and appreciation. This year a mind-boggling major change took place. I discovered that this woman, since the passing of her husband and the one-year obligatory grieving period, has taken up reading in a serious way. What a revelation. And what a gift-giving resource!

It also put me on the horns of a dilemma in that I have no idea what she might like. She’s been reading biographies a lot including, oddly enough, historically important baseball players and she went through the Dan Brown‘s pop-novel oeuvre (The Da Vinci Code, et al) in a flash.

One of the things this made me think about is what books do I hold in reverence that I should recommend to her? Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was the first thing to leap to mind and I gave that to her for her birthday. What I didn’t count on is that she seems to be loving the Harry Potter books and is now already deep into #3 of the series. For an individual who hasn’t read a book in probably 70 years (insert exclamation point here) she is making up for a lot of lost time and, although she has set aside Mockingbird in favor of Hogwarts, it’s just damned wonderful to see her, daily, with her feet up and her nose in a book.