The Bloganuary prompt asks me today: What is the most memorable gift you have received? And it doesn’t have an easy answer. Firstly, because I’ve been lucky enough to have received many gifts. Secondly, because my memory is quite absurd and forgets most things (which is good for continually surprising me).
But I have two very high up if I have to make a list.
The first one was brought to me by the Three Wise Men many, many years ago. I don’t know how old I was, somewhere between 4 and 10. It was a basket. For playing basketball. With its ball, backboard, rim, net, and plastic base filled with water so that it wouldn’t tip over. I always wanted to have lived in a big house with a basket above the garage (I did for eight years, but that’s another story). But in a flat, this was the most I could aspire to. And it was the most. It was.
I remember at the time, my older brother was fit and playing for the village team. We also watched all the games they showed on TV (he and my father were Real Madrid fans, I became a Joventut Badalona fan because I was against them and because they wore green). Some mornings we even watched the NBA game of the week on TVE2.
And the following day, as well as being very sleepy, I would try to emulate what I had seen in my toy basket. I remember those games of my Bulls against the Pistons and the Lakers -the teams my brother would ask for. Sweats and a lot of noise until my mother scolded us, laughing and shouting: Basket! Cheat! Block!
It was an incredible gift that lasted for many years and was always waiting for me in the corner behind the door to shoot from the bed, from the chair or from next to the window a three-pointer. It was the root of a passion for basketball that lasts to this day.
The other gift on the list is much more personal, and I will only go into a few details.
It was 2009, and it was for my birthday. It was the only present I ever got, and it was from the person I least expected it from. It arrived just in time from far away and put a happy note on a sad day (because I had no other presents!).
That T-shirt gave me the courage to change my life, and now more than thirteen years later, I can only be glad I received it. Thank you, M ❤️.
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