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By Dyana Herron

My sister, who is twelve years younger than I am, loves to watch the home videos our parents made during the two-year span they owned and used their RCA video camera.

There are few activities I hate more. But as my sister is the baby in the family, and I’m hopelessly inept when it comes to remote controls, even to find a “stop” button, family video marathon wins out every time.

My sister is one to two years old in these movies, a perfectly round, toothless, adorable mass of “goo” and “gah,” with a light moss of orange down covering her baby head.

I am thirteen and fourteen, and there is nothing round about me—I am a study in angles, teeth that need braces but won’t get them until senior year, my hair a mouse brown except for the clip-on strand of bright purple I bought on sale at Claire’s. My fingernails are painted green, but it looks less like the alternative rock edge I was going for and more like a fungal problem in need of a spray.

It’s horrible having to look at oneself and remember certain things you’d prefer not to think about ever, ever again. However, about a year ago during a viewing of a Christmas morning gift unwrapping, I noticed something about myself I thought I had hidden from those around me, a carefully guarded secret. But there it was, clear as day, on the screen.

My parents didn’t make us three kids (my brother is the middle child) open our gifts separately, one at a time, while everyone watched. Instead we were allowed to unwrap them at once, our parents surveying the mild chaos from the sidelines until we finished and began to show off our loot.

In the video, my brother is tearing through his gifts—a Nerf sports ball, a bass fishing computer game, and the Batman Forever soundtrack. His voice hasn’t changed yet, so his high-pitched squeals of delight can be heard over the rustle and rip of wrapping paper.

Then comes another voice—my mom’s, from behind the camera lens. She is telling me to hurry up. This is because I am pulling back the wrapping as gingerly as a mother would a bandage from her toddler's knee.

First I run my hand over the smooth wrapping, pausing to tell my parents how much I like the snowman print. Then I carefully untape one end of the package and gently separate the other taped edges, finally folding the paper into a neat square and placing it beside me. Then I look at the gift—and smile!—and read the print on the back or sides of the box, and tell my parents how happy I am to receive this gift, and ask them how did they know this is exactly what I wanted. Finally, to prove how much I love it, I begin to use it, drawing squiggles with my new colored gel pens, or skimming the first chapter of my new book.

My mother is losing her patience. She tells me to put it aside, and open the next box: “Your brother has opened all of his gifts already, but you’ve only opened two!” My dad is already going around with a plastic garbage bag, collecting the crumpled paper tossed haphazardly by my brother onto the floor.

The secret I thought I had hidden so well was this: I was a child who hated to receive gifts.

And the reason was not that I felt self-conscious about opening gifts in front of others, or that I felt guilty that my parents, who did not have a lot of money, would spend what I thought was too much on presents. Or that I felt like I didn’t deserve gifts, although maybe there were traces of all these feelings.

The problem was that when I opened a pack of gel pens I didn’t see a pack of gel pens—I saw my dad, who worked long hours in a concrete factory with no heating or air, coming home late in his dirty blue coveralls and untying his work boots without complaint. I saw him make two bologna sandwiches to take with him when he left for work the next morning before the rest of us were out of bed.

I saw my mom get three kids cleaned, fed, and dressed for school and church. Then I saw them both pick out the gel pens or toys or whatever at the Wal-mart thirty minutes from our house, wait to pay for them in an ungodly checkout line, wrap them late at night, and hide them for Christmas morning.

I hated opening those gifts because no matter how much care I took to act excited, surprised, or overjoyed, no “thank you” out of my mouth could convey the gratitude I had for them, all their work, all they did that was just for us.

So I did all I knew how to do. Even with the irritated chastisements from my mom, my dad cleaning in the background, my brother already at play, and my sister crying for breakfast, I opened each remaining package slowly and carefully, as if it were the only gift I had ever been given, and maybe ever would.

Now as an adult I have become a gift-giver as well as a receiver. Even though many of the gifts I receive from friends, coworkers, and others do not represent the same kind of sacrifice to me that my parents’ gifts did, I am still an uneasy recipient. Gifts are similar to words in that they can never truly embody the intent behind them. But we still keep giving them—presents, words—because those are the imperfect pieces we have to work with, both to convey love and receive it.