A Pox on Obligatory Creative Participatory Gifts

In a few weeks there will be a party for an elderly relative. She well deserves the party: she is the last of her generation, she is quite elderly, and she is ill. We are looking forward to the party: to seeing her and to seeing everyone else, for this branch of the family is at the stage where everyone gets together only for funerals, as we are past grandchild bar mitzvahs and weddings, and by the time we get to great-grandchild rituals, we will no longer be so close that we invite each other. So the party idea is good, very good (yay Mom!).

But now that the party is in full group email planning mode, we have come to the inevitable outcome of contemporary sentimental events: the creative participatory gift to which everyone is expected to contribute. You've done it, I'm sure: the quilt square, the page for the book, the photograph or anecdote. The request arrives, you put it aside, the reminder arrives, you ignore it, the this-is-your-absolute-last-chance email arrives, you quickly gather the children and have them scribble something on the quilt square or you bang out a quick limerick, you sigh a smoldering sigh of relief.

This time it's more annoying than most. The elderly relative has been creative all her life. We have all been the beneficiaries of her creativity. In our house, as in many, there are a quilt and a needlepoint portrait. The email arrived the other night. We are supposed to photograph our elderly-relative-created objects--in natural light, with digital camera, from six feet away, pointing straight down, send it in a jpeg, by yesterday (literally--I got the email Friday and the deadline was yesterday).

I think not.

Some of us are not creative. We don't like to make quilt squares. Some of us don't have a lot of time. We don't want to spend the time we have photographing needlepoint portraits. Some of us are cranky and like to complain.

I'm being too harsh. I have myself perpetrated the obligatory creative participatory gift. For my mother's 60th birthday, my sister and I sent out a call for photographs and anecdotes. My sister made a photo quilt and I compiled a book. They were beautiful and my mother loved them.

I am a bad, cranky person. I should go get the digital camera and the quilt and the needlepoint portrait. I should breathe in the positive karma of good deeds. But it's dark which means there's no natural light. I guess it's too late. Oh well.