Atop a cedar chest in the bedroom, Lucy the Black Lab is stretched out in the sun, her velvet chin resting between worn paws. Floppy ears nearly hide brown felt eyelashes, and her nose is rubbed raw from years of snuffing around. Her back slumps with the weariness of age – an old dog finally getting its moment in the sun, not to be bothered… until my daughter enters the room. "That's not where I left her!" she scolds, dragging Lucy down by her still-plump back legs. Then she is off, busying Lucy with one more round of "horsy" or cuddling with the other stuffed animals.

50 year-old Lucy started her puppyhood with my mother one Christmas morning. Named after "I Love Lucy," she was the favored chin-rest for many hours of watching TV, reading, and playing down on the ground. When my brother and I came along, so did Lucy, a little more worn along the neck and back from our chins and heads, softer from all the attention. Lucy went to college with me, moved across the country, and has out-lived two "real" dogs in her lifetime. Over the years she has required a few stitches to keep in her raw cotton stuffing, and her ears attached. My daughter "helps" in the emergency repairs with her wooden needle and yarn, claiming Lucy as her own, caring for and watching over her in her old age. But my daughter also insists that Lucy play with the rest of her toys, in a wagon, or wrapped in dress-up clothes in a heap on the floor. She must keep up with all the adventures a three year-old can create. There will be no rest for this old dog.

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One of my most enduring and endearing memories of a birthday is the winter I turned seven. I had caught the flu from my classmates and was home in my pajamas with a fever. I remember trying to swallow chicken noodle soup instead of the promised burgers and fries. My brother came downstairs after a mysterious absence, lumbering with something big and bulky wrapped in his afghan, and tried to balance the heap on my lap. Tucked inside was the entire family of the Three Little Bears that my grandmother had crocheted for him – re-gifted to me along with two, original Winnie The Pooh volumes (belonging to my father when he was a boy). My brother loved those bears and read the books over and over, so I was amazed that he was willing to part with them, even if it was only for the short distance between our two bedrooms. His gift cost nothing, and eventually he took the "wrapping" back to his bed. I do not recall playing much with the bears much after that winter (though the books now line my daughter's Winnie The Pooh shelf), or what else I might have received for my birthday that year. Nothing shiny or new stands out. I keep with me only the memory of my brother's gesture and his pleasure at surprising his sick sister.

One of the reasons I am drawn to Simple Giving is that I learned at a young age that what I could create with my hands or polish up from the back of the closet, is valued more than anything I could buy in a store. I grew up in a household where my mother sewed children's and doll clothes, crocheted, baked, and even macramed (ahhh… the 70's!). We glued rocks to birch bark, painted t-shirts, made books and cards, gave gifts of our own songs and stories recorded on the tape player. Most of the motivation came from our own inventiveness, but some came out of not having a large allowance or access to our parents' disposable income – they did not have much to dispose of, and less so after a divorce. If we wanted to buy something for ourselves or for others, we had to find a way to earn the money, and then budget and plan. A combination of paper routes, babysitting and Layaway accounts were our tools. Or we made it ourselves, or found some forgotten treasure of our own to give another life to.

One year I remember giving my mother 29 ribbons of mine for her 29th birthday. After dinner, I tied them all into her long, blonde hair creating a flashing, cottony, dreaded explosion of color and motion. No doubt they all eventually ended back in my dresser drawer after the party. No doubt my mother savored the luxury of sitting still for a half hour, not cleaning up the dishes, and having her hair played with and brushed. In that one act I began to learn the art of self-giving, with nothing produced, packaged, or purchased. I gave the gift of pleasure, pure and simple, which had the warming effect of giving me pleasure in return.

Yet, as an adult in this culture, I still sometimes struggle with gift-anxiety, with a small dose of gift-inferiority thrown in. Home-baked cookies, mixed-music CD's, and framed poems sometimes seem to pale in comparison to the slick promise of a new DVD or the bank-bulking weight of a grandparent's check. But over the years I am learning to come to terms with my own brand of giving – never without much thought and intent – and my family and friends have come to accept it, too. I take my cue also from my husband's family, who celebrate the Winter Solstice by giving away something that they no longer use but believe the other person might value (no White Elephant surprises allowed!). We will never be a family with much money – living simply means for us living on one income while our children are young so one of us can be with them at home. We welcome as many "heirloom" wooden and hand-crafted toys, thoughtful games and organic clothing as we can afford (grandparents and discounts come in handy), but we most often find what we need through second-hand stores, craigslist.com, garage sales and relatives. Some of my daughters favorite clothes once belonged to her older cousins, a connection she mentions every time she proudly gets dressed. And big boxes sent from our parents' basements and garages, filled with our childhood toys, become a Pandora's Playground – Dr. Seuss and Richard Scarry books, Fischer Price action-adventure figures and vehicles, forgotten baby dolls and clothing – all of it welcomed by our daughter as if they were brand new, each finding a new life on a birthday or a rainy day.

There is much to be said, too, about cooperative toy-owning and toy-sharing, especially for big-ticket items like wooden kitchen sets, workshops, or dollhouses. My friends and I don't all have the space and income to accommodate everything we see in magazines and catalogues that we think our children need to make their childhood complete, nor would we want to indulge them with everything they want. Some toys belong to their day-care classrooms, a built-in lesson of how to share what belongs to everyone. Some games are at certain family's homes, so it becomes a treat to play with them when we go visiting. The library is the ultimate Temple of Borrowing, books flowing through hundreds of children's hands and minds. When you start looking at what you have around you, the bounty in such an insatiable society, it is a wonder that malls do any business at all. What is at odds with such simplicity is our constant craving for the New – something not inherent, but taught, to young children.

My daughter is now developing her own knack for "making it myself!" Her self-esteem swells like a treasured balloon when the gift comes wholly from her – the idea, the gathering, the making, the enjoying, the giving – experiences we could never find convincingly packaged, end-capped and bought. She has watched and learned enough from us to know that nearly anything can be created from old wood and nails, cloth and thread, flour and water, seed and sun. She knows that most anything can be fixed or transformed, that old toys no longer used can be new to someone else and enjoyed for another round. It is a small, but encouraging hope, that she is growing up to be not another consumer, but a giver, a participant in the life of a gift.

Ultimately, we are at peace with this slower, less-polished, way of life. Our gift-giving process may take a bit more time in the conception and the completion, may be as temporary as a good meal shared with friends, but in the end it leaves both the giver and receiver with the feeling that something true and heartfelt has been exchanged. Shiny paper often wraps only illusions. If we ask ourselves what we truly want or need, most of us could answer honestly, any old thing will do. It is the thought that matters. Like an old dog learning the next generation's tricks, our gifts can be thread-bare in the best places – the curve of the back where we all have laid our head for a moment to dream up our next adventure.

Kristin Berger is a mother and writer, and her work has appeared in Hip Mama,
mamazine.com, The Pedestal Magazine Online, The American Poetry Journal,
VoiceCatcher, and other publications.