Michael D. Davis.

A gift can reveal an amazing amount about a person. From giving and receiving gifts, we can tell who cares, who pays attention, who remembers. I once gave in full sincerity a faceless rubber pig to my sister. I don’t know what this says about me or her, but she still has it.

My sister and I are seven years and three days apart on our birthdays. I am writing this at five in the morning on the twenty-fourth, the day of my sister’s birthday. I just wrapped the second of the two presents I am giving her, and I am not confident about either.

I waited far longer than I should have to start shopping for birthday gifts for my sister this year, but that’s because I couldn’t think of anything to get her. She reads, but she has a well-worn library card. She likes Marvel movies, but I think we’ve gotten her every piece of Marvel merchandise you can think of. A mjölnir, Thor’s hammer water bottle, yeah, bought and given. The Marvel well has run dry. And for some reason, I couldn’t come up with any more ideas. I was hitting a wall and even just googling generic “gifts for your sister list” in hopes that would lead to something. It didn’t.

So, I asked her what she wanted. She said I could give her a piece of my art, which I seem to do every year, and I feel it is kind of a cheat. I asked her what else. She proceeded to send me the saddest Amazon wishlist ever created. It had three different types of items on it. Toothbrushes, sunglasses, and a phone case. And she told me that if I get her a pair of sunglasses, I should buy her two pairs as she breaks them frequently, and could use the spare pair as parts. I don’t know how she breaks her glasses so often; at the rate her glasses break, you’d think she’s just going along bouncing her head off the pavement.

After a few more days of twiddling my thumbs and coming up blank, I bought her the phone case she wanted and drew her a flower. My sister does not particularly like flowers, but I thought it looked nice. So, it’s gonna be a pretty mediocre present opening later today.

I like giving gifts year-round, just little things, ya see something, ya think of someone, ya get it. Simple, thoughtful, perfect. I think those mean a lot more than the implied obligation of a holiday. However, with that being said, one of the gifts that I received that has meant the most to me in recent years, I was given on Christmas.

So, long before I started writing for the newspaper, I wrote for myself. I mainly wrote short stories, and they were published in pulp webzines on the internet or in the occasional anthology. For small independent presses, putting together an anthology is a hefty task that can take much longer than if your mainstream publisher is doing it. That’s because, unlike Penguin Books or HarperCollins, these guys don’t have giant office buildings with a thousand employees. Places like Blood Song Books or Sirens Call Publications (both actual independent publishers that once published my stories and are now defunct) only have a small team of passionate people who dedicate their free time after work to getting things done.

One anthology I’m published in took four years to see the light of day. The 42 Stories Anthology has an amazingly unique premise. This book is split into 42 sections, showcasing 42 different genres. Each section holds 42 stories written by 42 different authors, and each story is only 42 words long. I have three stories in this book, in three different sections.

My stories were accepted in 2020. Four years later, I’m working for the paper; I’ve forgotten that these stories were accepted until I get an email that the book is finally coming out. The book is published as of October 2024, and it is massive as it contains 1,764 stories. The bad part is that, since it is such a massive book and for other reasons, they priced it at a whopping $50. That means I wasn’t buying a copy. I’ve never spent fifty bucks on a book, even though I love books, and I’m not gonna start now.

So, I resigned myself to possibly never seeing this book that I contributed to. Then, Christmas day, I unwrapped it. I can’t describe how that made me feel. I laughed, I just about cried, and we sat there for a while reading some of the stories.

They say it’s the thought that counts, and I believe that more now than ever. A thoughtful gift can make such an amazing impact, and reveal so much about a person. Which is why I’m worried about giving my sister a phone case and a drawing of a flower when she doesn’t particularly like flowers, but it’s better than a toothbrush, I guess.