It’s only now, after her death in March, do I understand the motherly instinct that underpinned her reliable gift giving. It was one of the ways she tried to make up for the mother we had both lost to depression, and then premature death from ovarian cancer.

As I go about my life now, after her death, I keep coming upon things that she gave me over the years that I was amused and touched by even as I didn’t fully appreciate their import. I see now that my sister’s gifts were always attuned to my latest yearning, or iteration of my self-image. She knew exactly who I was and where my head was at. While at the time, I certainly sensed this, I assumed it was just natural.

There is, for example, the Shaun the Sheep stuffed animal that she sent me when, five years ago, my husband and I began living full-time in Vermont and I followed through on my dream of cutting our carbon footprint by replacing our lawnmower with sheep. My sister, from her roost in Los Angeles, had been amused by the fantasy, then tickled by the execution. I could always rely on her for that.

Sometime in the ‘80s, when my heart was set on getting to the (then) Soviet Union as a newspaper reporter, she sent me a Cossack-accoutred Cabbage Patch doll. I can’t remember exactly when in my saga the doll – with fuzzy black Cossack cap, high-topped black plastic boots, velvet brown culotte and red shirt with embroidered trim (she had to have special ordered it!) – arrived. I may have been midway in my quest or it may have been when the quest abruptly ended in misery because of my crise of confidence. In any case, she knew just what was needed.

While the gift giving had its mother-daughter aspects, our sisterly, rivalrous relationship always hovered. There was, for example, the first of her particularly memorable gifts – a fine fountain pen and bottle of ink for my high school graduation. “You are now a fountain pen,” she said, riffing on, “Today I am a fountain pen,” itself a riff on, “Today I am a man,” the climactic moment in a Jewish boy’s bar mitzvah. When she started to explain the reference to the Jewish tradition – she was my tutor in Jewish lore, mostly appreciated given our secular upbringing which was short on Jewish lore – I remonstrated. I knew this reference and I resented what I experienced as an insult to my worldliness. (I did, though, have my sister to thank for earlier, having let me in on the secret that there were certain names that were reliable giveaways that a person was Jewish. I’d been clueless!)

Another early present was a sweatshirt, emblazoned with the words “Guides de Haute Montagne,” above a mountain and crossed ice axes. I know it was early because it’s practically disintegrated with age, but I’m incapable of recycling it because it came from her. I was probably in high school, where I thrived on the hiking and camping trips and where dreams of similar adventures around the world were nurtured.

In the ‘80s or ‘90s, when I was maintaining my alternative culture identity, or simply feeling too strapped to spring for a cut very often, my hair poofed out in a rather extravagant white-person’s ‘fro. Sometime in there, my sister sent me a couple of sundresses with big blocks of color, like kente cloth. I loved them. I recall feeling I never would have bought them for myself because they were bolder than I dared to be, never mind too expensive.

Also sometime in the ‘80s, when we were both struggling with our respective first novels, she sent me a 2”x2”x2” solid cube of wood labeled, “Writer’s Block,” with holes on the top for putting pens and pencils in. I remember puzzling over the gift, wondering how to interpret it since we were already feeling competitive over our writing. I decided to welcome it as an uncomplicated gesture of generosity.

When my sister first came to visit after my husband and I bought our little cape in southern Vermont, nearly 25 years ago, for weekend escapes from New York City, she brought a horseshoe to be nailed over the front door. More than a sweet gesture, it was a much-needed shout of support to counterbalance our father’s resentment of the house. His feelings were understandable – he, a builder, in what was his last monument to himself and our mother, had built a house further north in Vermont. Our buying a house 100 miles south meant that we would no longer be relying on his place for our getaways, and that we were likely to sell his house rather than use it after he died. Nevertheless, his resentment hurt. And the horseshoe helped. I can still picture my sister contemplating whether the horseshoe should be placed open side up or down over the door. (It’s open side up.)

Sometime in the late aughts, my sister came to resent my expectations of her gift giving and she let me know it. I understood at the time, was ashamed that I’d had the expectation, but was sad to be losing the sinecure. After some bloodletting on the phone, there was a hiatus in present giving. Then, at some point, the presents began again, sporadically, and generally they were less ingenious. It had become a duty rather than a pleasure for her.

Still, there were exceptions to the more pedestrian. Around 2018, when the movie “The Notorious RBG” came out, she sent me a soft cotton t-shirt emblazoned with, “You Can’t Spell Truth Without Ruth.” Three mornings a week, I put it on with relish and do my yoga routines in it.

Thank you sis