The Push Present

My darling fabulous daughter,

I had a delightful visit a few weeks ago with a dear friend, her daughter - now a new mother, and her two-week-old angel-faced grandbaby. As new mommy was patting the baby’s back I noticed she wore a ring with an unusually large central gemstone that was surrounded by glittering diamonds. I commented on the rather spectacular ring and was told it was a “push present”.

Push present? I’d never heard the term before, but was soon enlightened: it’s a gift a new mother receives from the baby’s father for “pushing out a baby”. Oh how indelicate is modern phraseology! During the tender years of my youth a baby was ‘brought by the stork’ or ‘found in the garden under a cabbage leaf’ - far less visceral evocations than “pushing out a baby”. But, I digress…

After my initial wonder of what kind of money-grubbing concept the jewelry industry would next concoct in efforts to divert savings away from education funds and into its greedy coffers, I conducted a little research on-line. I soon discovered that while push presents are a relatively new phenomenon in North America, there’s a long-standing tradition of giving jewelry to new mothers in other countries.

Soon the gears in my wee brain began churning in a new direction:  being Canadian, and Canada being part of the British Commonwealth, and there being a long-standing tradition in England of jewelry-giving to new mothers, and it being more than a few years since I've received an extravagant gift of jewelry from my husband, the father of my babies … you can see where my thoughts were leading me.

And so it came to be that while working in the yard a few days later, I shared my newfound knowledge of push presents with your father. I described the sound reasoning behind such gifts, occasionally tapping my dilapidated trowel in the air to punctuate salient points, such as the 9 month-long-and-beyond ruination of a once lithe body, the rigors and agonies of protracted labour, etc. Finally, to illustrate my glowing description of the maharani-worthy ring worn by my friend’s lovely daughter, I drew a circle (the gold band) in the air with my wobbly-handled trowel and made a few emphatic stabs where the large gemstone and diamonds were located. Then, with what I supposed to be a winning smile, I suggested that although a few decades had passed since the blessed events, I, myself, would not be adverse to receiving a push present or two.

All too predictably, your father snorted in disgust and said he’d never heard anything so ridiculous in his entire life; that our two gorgeous daughters were presents enough. With a frightful scowl marring his handsome face, he then started his oversized (and overloud) lawn mower and roared around the yard like a demon on a mission until he’d covered the near quarter acre lawn - twice!

Imagine my surprise, then, when the dear man came home the following afternoon and announced he’d bought me a push present. He stood before me like a schoolboy with his hand behind his back, and the expression on his face told me he was exceedingly pleased with himself. With a flourish, he handed me a brand new trowel manufactured from one piece of tough plastic incapable of degenerating to the point of wobbling. “If you don’t like it,” he cheerfully proclaimed, “you can shovel it!”