Oh, my. Anniversary gifts certainly have changed over the years--and this is by no means a bad thing.

I've never quite gotten over the change in society's mindset when it comes to appropriate gifts for a significant other while courting. When I was comin' up, as it were, everyone knew that no respectable man would ever give his respectable sweetie anything except candy and flowers until they'd reached an "understanding," which was OldSouthSpeak for "engaged, but he hasn't bought a ring yet."

Really, in the Proper Old South, an engagement didn't even need to be marked with a diamond ring; Nice People felt that an "engagement gift" of some significance was quite enough. My mother, who never cared for diamonds particularly and doesn't look good in them, had a lovely triple strand of pearls for an engagement present. The Northern set might call my father a cheapskate, but my mother's friends (and WAAC mates) cooed over his sensitivity--he knew how well she loved pearls and how good they looked on her. Besides, that choker probably cost more than a good number of the cheapo diamonds then being sold on the outskirts of FayetteNam, NC, where my parents met. (Oh, and naturally, he sent up to Baltimore to have them especially strung for her. This is the guy who wanted his wife to take an eight-hour train ride so his kid would be born in Baltimore.)

Reading over my friends' blogs of late, I learn that anniversary presents have been renewed with interest. My dear friends Bill and Pam are embarking on another year of wedded bliss (eep--this must be, what, twelve years now? Note previous comments on weddings and photographs and getting older...) Bill gave Pam an engraved iPod.

Now. I am all about tradition. I don't want any potential suitors to ever give me anything but flowers and candy (red roses, and orange creams from Rheb's, if there are any USMC officers paying attention), but traditional anniversary gifts were obviously set up in the Dark Ages and should have stayed there.

The appropriate first anniversary gift is one made of paper. OK, whatever, you still need lots of stationery when you're newly married. The second is cotton. Fine, too, you can never have too many sheets and towels for random guests. The third, though, is leather. WHAT? Happy anniversary, dear, here's a new saddle? I suppose, for the kinkier among us... but, we then move on to linen, which is again useful.

Personally, I have enough bedsheets and linens to last for the next three generations, and as for paper, I am quite capable of going downtown to buy my own stationery. I prefer to do so myself because I do not trust anybody, including my mother, to ever pick out exactly what I want or to get the damned engraving right. Where leather is concerned, I don't see that I need any, or at least not that anybody needs to know about. In the declining possibility of my eventual marriage, I'd rather that my spouse/friends would give things like iPods. I'd probably have a fine time figuring out how the thing worked, but once I did, it would be infinitely more useful than a random leather doohickey.

And, Bill had the sense to have Pam's iPod engraved. I didn't even know you could do that with such things. Engraving, in my head, is reserved for silver and stationery--although I've seen a few old and very expensive pianos and gramophones that had a monogram, so I suppose it's the same general idea. An engraving just makes something special and wonderful, even if it's just paper.

My last present from a recently departed friend was a place setting in my silver pattern, which is of course long discontinued. He'd managed to find pieces with a "G" engraved (properly on the back of the handle). In very Scarlett-ish mode, I forgot to be scandalized by the extravagance of the present because I was so enthralled with its shiny repousse roses. Now that I've admitted that, it will be rather more difficult to enforce the standard of "flowers and candy only!"