This entire post stolen from CNN.com, written by Bexley, Ohio born Journalist Bob Greene, Jr. and sent to me by Sister Tina:
(CNN) -- Attention, holiday shoppers: Put away your wallets
and credit cards.
If you're looking for a gift that
will please someone close to you, there's one that won't cost you a cent, and
that you won't find on any store shelf.
This thought occurred the other
day when, on a visit to the west coast of Florida, I was walking through a
crowded outdoor mall and the familiar voice of Frank Sinatra wafted out of the
loudspeaker system:
"If I don't see her each day I
miss her. . . ." I recognized the song immediately. "Believe me, I've got a case, "On Nancy, with the laughing
face. . . ." It's one of the songs Sinatra
cherished most. And what does that have to do
with the most meaningful present you can give to a loved one this holiday
season?
There's a story behind the song:
a story with a lesson. In the early 1940s, when Sinatra
was a relatively young man, he and his wife were having a birthday party for
their firstborn child, Nancy. Among the invited guests were two good friends of
Sinatra: the wonderful musical composer Jimmy Van Heusen, and the brilliant
comedic actor Phil Silvers.Van Heusen and Silvers wanted to
bring a gift. But what could they purchase that Sinatra himself could not
provide for his daughter?
What the two men did was revise
a song they'd been working on. Van Heusen had written the melody; Silvers was
the writer of the lyrics. (He would go on to immense fame in the 1950s playing
Army Sgt. Ernest Bilko on CBS television, but his talents extended to many
fields.) Their song, in an early version,
had featured the words "Bessie, with the laughing face," referring to the wife
of a colleague. Now they worked some more on it, and fashioned the lyrics for
Sinatra's young daughter.
They played and sang it at the
birthday party. Sinatra adored it; by some accounts, he was so moved by the
gesture from his friends that he began to cry. Talk about a gift for the man who
has everything: What are you going to give to Frank Sinatra that he will
remember? A tie? A car? A bottle of liquor? He needed nothing.
But that song, and the effort
his two friends had put into it, touched him so deeply that, until his dying
day, it signified something achingly personal to him.
And now it's the holiday season.
We've all read about the mobs of people at door-buster sales, the fights in the
aisles of stores. Yet there is a way that each of us, if we are willing to
invest the hours, can come up with a gift that will mean more than any
flat-screen television or video game. If you're good with words, write
the best and longest letter you've ever written to a family member who maybe
doesn't know just what he or she means to you. That letter will be kept, and
treasured, long after gifts bought in a store have worn out or been thrown
away. If you're artistic, paint a
picture with a special significance that the person you love will
understand. If you're the organized type,
gather family photos from over the years, select them carefully, and put them
together in an album that will mean everything to the person who receives
it. If you're musical ... well, do
for the person you care about what Phil Silvers and Jimmy Van Heusen did for
Frank Sinatra and his family.
Will the effort be
time-consuming? Yes, and that's the point. It will certainly be time better
spent than standing in line for hours before some big-box store opens its doors
for midnight bargains.
Because I'd heard about the
Sinatra story for so many years, I called his younger daughter Tina the other
afternoon to ask her about its veracity -- and its meaning to her family. "All of it is true," she
said.
She said that her dad, Silvers
and Van Heusen were dear buddies who loved to spend time together: "There would
be New Year's Eve parties where they'd set up a stage, and play charades games.
Everyone had to participate. They just liked being around each other."
When the two men presented the
song at the birthday party, she said, "It was done out of pure friendship." Her
father and her mother -- whose name was also Nancy -- couldn't have been more
moved by the personal nature of the gift. Tina had not yet been born, but the
reason she is certain of this, she said, is that her dad talked about it, from
time to time, for the rest of his life. And for him, the song -- and the
memories of his friends who wrote it -- never diminished in emotional power. She
recalled one time in Paris when her dad was in a brittle mood over some things
that were going on in his life. He was angry and irritable; at a concert, as he
worked his way through his song list, his agitation was evident to everyone who
knew him.
But then he got to "Nancy (with
the Laughing Face)".
"His entire physicality
changed," Tina said. 'He relaxed. He calmed down. The gentleness of the song,
and the meaning of the story behind it, did that to him. You could see it. He
went from being tense and on edge to being like an at-ease sergeant." The gift from his buddies did
that for him, all those years later.
The best gifts are like
that. Here's hoping you'll find the
right one.
