Tambourine

I am sure many people have given or received gifts from time to time that are beyond special. They are either so thoughtful or so capture the personality of the person as to cause shock and awe to the recipient.

One Christmas, Amy surprised me with such a gift. My roots to Minnesota run deep with most of my family living in the state. Growing up, my siblings and I developed very strong ties to all the failing Minnesota sports teams. Whether it was the Twins, the North Stars, or the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, both football and hockey, our family was the epitome of the word fan. This included being a long-suffering Minnesota Viking fan. Please note, you cannot separate the word long-suffering from the words Minnesota Viking fan. Watching your team lose four Super Bowls during your childhood and then never making it back to the big game decade after decade makes you a pessimist at heart.

I guess it is what you are raised with during your childhood that makes those ties run deep no matter where in the country you end up living. For me, my pride in being the first graduate of the University of Minnesota in my family ran deep. I had Gopher t-shirts, sweatshirts, jerseys, beer glasses, and . . . well, you get the picture.

One year, Amy surprised me by framing a charcoal print of the Mall of the University of Minnesota campus and my degree from the Carlson School of Management. It had been gathering dust in the storage area of our basement for more than a decade. When I opened it on Christmas morning, it left me speechless. I value this gift more than any I received from Amy in our thirty-two years of marriage.

There was one gift that I gave Amy for her birthday that became that gift for her. I wish it were because of my thoughtfulness, but I really thought it would get a few good laughs and then be forgotten.

Amy and I love, love, love music. Amy grew up with music in her family. Her parents often listened to music, including Peter, Paul and Mary, Dan Fogelberg, James Taylor, Neil Diamond, and the list goes on and on. This love of music was passed onto each of their children.

Unfortunately for Amy and me, neither of us had a lick of musical talent. My mother played the accordion and appeared on television back in the late 1950s, but for whatever reason, her talent never manifested itself in me.

During elementary school, every student was required to learn to play an instrument. I was assigned the trombone and had a weekly music lesson. I stopped going after only two weeks. I fully expected to be reprimanded after parent-teacher conferences, but surprisingly, neither my parents nor the teacher ever spoke to me about it. I guess they knew a lost cause when they saw one.

Amy was similarly devoid of musical talent. What she lacked in actual talent, she more than made up for with passion and enthusiasm for the various music she loved. One time after a particularly rough semester in college, Amy celebrated the end of finals by playing the music in her car so loud that it took the police more than a mile with sirens and loud speaker to pull her over. In our kitchen, a sign reading “This Kitchen Is for Dancing” has been prominently displayed as long as I can remember.

We joked for many years that if we only had any musical ability at all we would be famous. So one year, I came up with the idea to give Amy a tambourine for her birthday. It combined her love of music and dancing. Let’s be honest, musically, it needs only a minuscule level of skill.

Her look of shock and pure joy when she opened her present was priceless. It was love at first sight. From that point forward, Amy would bring her tambourine to neighborhood gatherings and dance to the music along with her tambourine. If she forgot it, she would send one of the kids off to retrieve it for her. It was not uncommon to see Amy dancing and playing it on top of tables as the evening progressed. Our neighbors Kaye, Louann, Carol, and Diane were often up there with her.

I never envisioned that this one gift would capture Amy’s personality and spirit so completely. It became legend in our neighborhood. Rock on, Amy!