Giving Knives

When you buy or sell a house, your realtor will often give you a gift to thank you for your business. Based on recent experience, nice kitchen knives are the current “Thank you” gift from realtors.

When I received the first knife, from the realtor who sold my house in Alabama, I was somewhat taken aback. I was brought up never to give a knife: according to my superstitious Tennessee grandfather, “if you give a knife, it cuts the friendship.” In my family, knives are only loaned, never given, in observance of a superstition that none of us really believes.

But superstitions, like so many silly things, get their start somewhere. Maybe the knives that irrevocably damage friendships are not actual knives, but rather, metaphorical ones. There are certainly a lot of cutting words going around in recent years, and they have definitely destroyed families and relationships. I read one article about a woman who separated from her husband because of the insurmountable differences in their political views.

It’s not just politics, either. The stress of this year is getting to us. I know it’s getting to me. Some things I cared about were lost in my recent move, and I was hard on my daughter (who packed those things) about the loss. It wasn’t her fault. We were all under the gun, working well past any reasonable capacity, calling in favors in desperation, pushing ourselves hard in the middle of a year that has felt, at times, like a war. Some of the things didn’t make it. I came to the end of that particular road—the one that involved moving from one state to another in the middle of a pandemic, into temporary housing with some of my things, selling the home I raised my babies in, letting someone else pack it up for me because I was quarantined on closing day, and then moving a second time into permanent housing.

I lost my cool over the missing items. I regretted it almost immediately; no thing ever created is worth more to me than my relationship with my daughter. I called her the next day and apologized; I promised to do better going forward. She forgave me, but I really do have to do better: no more knife-words, hacking away at the dearest people in my life.

We all need to do better. No more knife-words, not from those of us who are trying not to be toxic to those around us. Think about the things you say, and their potential to cut up a relationship. Do you really want to say them? Because a word once said cannot be unsaid.

I really liked the realtor who helped me find my new house. Unlike the realtor who sold my home after I had moved out of it, I spent a lot of time with Bill, and he just seemed like someone I could be friends, not just business colleagues, with. In the spring, I thought, when this pandemic is waning and we are settled, I will invite Bill and his wife and some other people and we will have a cookout in my beautiful new backyard. So when he, too, gave me a nice kitchen knife as a housewarming gift, I felt faintly disappointed. According to superstition, we could never be friends.

But inside the box was a card with a penny and a poem, addressing the superstition, and suggesting that if the penny was returned to the giver, “Now I’ve been ‘paid,’ and our friendship will stay as strong as this blade.” It made me smile.

When Bill came by later, just to say hello, I told him “Wait here! I have something for you!” I went and retrieved the card and the penny. He accepted it, looking slightly perplexed, and then read the card.  

Bill shook his head, quirking a smile. “You know, I’ve been giving away those knives for two years, and you’re the first person to give this back to me. I’d never read it. I don’t think most people ever read it.”

“I read everything,” I said, “But I knew what the penny was for before I read the card. I know you can’t give a knife. It cuts the friendship.”

So I am still going to invite Bill and his wife to my cookout. Because knives and words can cut friendships, but they can also start us on the path to mending them. “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person,” Paul wrote in Colossians 4:6. I intend to make it a goal in 2021 to give fewer knives, and more grace. And whether or note you are superstitious, I hope we all leave 2020 behind with a promise to present only our knives, and never our sharp tongues, in the new year.