Regifting by Liz Flaherty

My mom always had a few pairs of new socks tucked back somewhere for unexpected guests at Christmas. I was embarrassed by that, as I thought we were the only family in the world who gave socks and underwear for Christmas. (We can add that to the plethora of things I've been wrong about.)

Many years later, I keep a bagful of bottles of foaming

hand soap and bars of handmade soap in different scents--enough to get me through a year of unexpected guests and add-on gifts because...well, doesn't everyone like soap? I wonder if my kids are embarrassed. I don't think I'll ask. I'll  just go on giving bottles and bars of soap. If the receivers don't care for them, they can give them to someone else. 

I'm not sure when regifting became a "thing." It's even in the dictionary. When I was younger, it was something you looked over your shoulder when you did, hoping against hope that you weren't giving something back to the person who gave it to you. You made sure the tags were off and that the gift was still in its original container. 

This year, because I was having so much fun making them, nearly everyone on my present list--and a few who weren't--got one or two potholders for Christmas. I gave them away with signed books, as add-ons instead of (or in addition to, sometimes) bottles of foaming soap. I was embarrassed again, because they're pretty obviously crafted by a person who's in no way a crafter. 

But people have been kind about receiving their soap and potholders. I hope they've come in handy, even if only as regifts for unexpected guests. 

What's important about regifting is that it is still giving. The person you're giving it to is important to you or you wouldn't bother, would you? If you still consider the gift yours after you've given it away and harbor resentment because it wasn't used the way you hoped, then you didn't really want it to be a gift anyway, did you?

Today, I'm your regift. (And if someone just said, What, again?...well, yeah, I don't blame you.) The person who was supposed to be on the Window today couldn't make it--it's the busiest time of year and she ran out of time, something we can all identify with--so I'm today's guest on the Window. 

Thanks for reading, for visiting through this Holiday Project of a post every day. And thanks to the guests who've come and shared pieces of their lives and memories and traditions with us. The Project isn't done yet, but we're winding down. As we go into the New Year, I wish you all so much happy. Have a great week. Be nice to somebody. 

Oh! I'm a guest today, so I get to do my little promo shot here at the end, too! No, don't go away--maybe you haven't read it.

A while back, I got the rights back to A Soft Place to Fall, one of my favorite stories. It's about Marriage Resurrected, one of my favorite plots; about quilting, one of my favorite things; and set in rural Kentucky, one of my favorite places. It's inspirational romance, although I write inspirational like my friend Pamela Thibodeaux, with a bit of an edge. If you haven't read it, I hope you try it now. I love its new cover, created by Nancy Fraser. It's available in both ebook and paperback. Although it can be gotten from bookstores, I know it's not there yet, so I'm giving you the Amazon and D2D links. 

Early McGrath doesn't want freedom from her thirty-year marriage to Nash, but when it's forced upon her, she does the only thing she knows to do - she goes home to the Ridge to reinvent herself.
Only what is someone who's spent her life taking care of other people supposed to do when no one needs her anymore? Even as the threads of her life unravel, she finds new ones - reconnecting with the church of her childhood, building the quilt shop that has been a long-time dream, and forging a new friendship with her former husband.
The definition of freedom changes when it's combined with faith, and through it all perhaps Early and Nash can find a Soft Place to Fall.