How to give a gift

Hate to shatter everyone’s hopes and dreams, but the competition for best graduation gift ever given is finished. Game over. You can go home now. Michelle won.

Friday night after my folks took us out to eat, we got home and Michelle told me that Gerald, an elderly man in our neighborhood, wanted to congratulate me on finishing my master’s. So we headed over there, and we talked for awhile about the latest news, and I was thinking, “Wait, you invited us over to chat about Osama bin Laden?” When we got up to leave he handed me an envelope. I opened it and was confused because I thought it was empty, but then I saw that there was a slip of paper inside with four lines of poetry on it. And now I was thinking, “An 80-year-old is writing me poetry?” FINALLY I caught on that Michelle had master-minded an elaborate treasure hunt with clues slipped into envelopes. So we proceeded to traipse around the neighborhood, walking into people’s backyards, poking around their shrubs, and generally putting ourselves at risk for trespassing as I looked for the next clue. (OK, Michelle had called everyone ahead of time and got permission, but it was more exciting to imagine that the cops and/or a pit-bull would ambush us at any moment.)

About half hour later, I found the last clue, which took us back to our house. My parents, meanwhile, had arrived and put the treasure out for me to find. If I try to describe my enthusiasm when I walked in the door, it would sound like I’m exaggerating. So let this video serve as proof:

Michelle has been saving money here or there for the past year, including a lot of her hard-earned piano lesson money, to buy this canvas print and have it framed. It’s called High in the Morning, by American West painter Maynard Dixon, and I’ve wanted it for years. Michelle even tricked me into picking my favorite frame for it, with me none the wiser. My sister- and brother-in-law Rebecca and Ben picked it up from the BYU Museum of Art and snuck it into our car during one of our trips to Provo. My mom and dad helped pay for the frame. And Michelle's friend Alison kept it at her house for the last month. So basically everyone in the world was in on the secret but me. It’s now hanging in my office at the Church History Library, and I can’t stop bragging about my wife to coworkers and anyone else who wanders by. Simply awesome.

(This photo shows both that I'm very excited and that marriage and fatherhood have stripped me of any sense of shame.)