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My dad traveled a lot when I was a child. He brought things home with him. For my mom, it was china cups. For my sister, spoons. For me, most often, vehicles.

He brought me cars and trucks, little ones, Matchbox. Because he traveled in western Canada, they often were the original English ones.

Once he brought me a green ball, about the size of a tangerine. He told me it was a Canadian superball, though it didn’t bounce like the US version. I think I still have it.

At Christmas, we’d take a trip to the mall as a family. We’d each get a $5 and we would have to spend it on ourselves while at the mall or give the change back. I took it seriously. One of my sisters kept the cash, I discovered recently.

As we got older, it continued, this gift-giving. Often it turned into a $20, “for tolls.” There were other gifts as well. After awhile, it got uncomfortable for Nancy.

Until one day. One day I finally figured out what was happening. Dad’s way of saying “I love you” was with gifts.

I think it happened after reading about one guy, Gary Chapman,  who talks about “love languages.” He suggests that there are five: words of affirmation, gift-giving, acts of service, quality time, and physical touch. Chapman says we have a primary language, one which we both speak and listen for.

Without that frame, gift giving looks like buying someone off, or trying to make up for not being around. With that frame, it’s as valid a way to express love as saying it out loud, or giving a hug, or fixing a meal, or flying a kite.

Without that frame, you can struggle wondering why you never hear the phrase. With that frame, you realize that someone has been telling you every way they know how.

Without that frame, you can struggle to understand why you connect with one of your children and not another. With that frame, you begin to understand that one desperately wants to be around you and one needs your touch and one just needs to hear that they are doing well and one needs a small object that says you thought of them.

A couple years ago, my parents gave us a car. Used, worth more as a gift than a trade-in, well kept as everything around my dad.

I talked to dad for a bit about the idea of love languages, of what I now understood. I looked at him and said, “I love you, too.”

He smiled through our tears.

by Jon Swanson

Photo graciously provided by the author, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved