I didn’t know it at the time, but it was one of the best gifts Dad ever gave me.

It was a pocketknife—just two simple blades that folded into a plain brown handle that said “Old Timer.” In fact, here is the exact one I had. The Girl Scouts taught me most of my knife safety, including how to pass a knife to someone else—“thank you”—but Dad taught me how to open it, how to close it using the heel of my hand, and how to whittle. I loved to whittle. Whittling is the al fresco equivalent of knitting, but less goal-oriented.

Our family went camping every Thanksgiving for many years. I remember the following things: we always had barbecue chicken instead of turkey, with sweet potatoes wrapped in foil and cooked nestled in campfire coals; it always rained at least one night, and we’d wake up with the floor of our tent dotted by little puddles; we’d always walk around the lake at least once over the weekend, and it was a long way; and I always found our marshmallow roasting sticks and whittled the tips to a fine white point.

I didn’t know what an important gift it was until years later, when I took a seminary course, in feminist theology, actually. My professor was young, vivacious, brilliant. (This is a different professor than the one I’ve written about before, although the description fits them both.) I took the class while I was living in Houston, through a seminary extension program. The class was amazing.

Anyway, one night this professor was recalling asking her father for a pocketknife as a child. He refused—it wasn’t the kind of thing that girls were supposed to have. (I thought: really? In this day and age? She wasn’t that much older than I was.) She remembered her disappointment, but remarked that it was just as well—if he had consented to buy her one, it probably would have been some cheesy pink thing. I remembered my Old Timer and smiled.

The next time I saw my dad, I thanked him for buying me that pocketknife. It would have never occurred to him not to, which I think is what made it a great gift. He wasn’t up on a soapbox when he gave it to me, but it did signify something important. He was taking a small stand—a stand he would take countless times when I was growing up—a stand that said, “Do what you want. Don’t let anything stop you.”

He got a kick out of my professor’s story, and together we hatched a little plan. You need to know that Dad’s profession for most of his life was selling pens, shirts, mugs, koosh balls, you name it, with logos and messages printed on them. Most offices he worked in had a showroom with glass shelves piled high with tchotchkes, which was a fun, surreal place for a child. Anyway, he decided this professor needed a pocketknife, and we were going to be the ones to give it to her. So I drove down to his office and we boosted a Swiss Army knife from his company shelves. We thought about the cheesy pink, but decided on liturgical purple instead.

I gave it to her at the end of the semester, and made some dumb speech. She loved it. I spoke to her several years later, when I was getting ready to go to seminary full-time, and she said, “Tell your dad I still have that pocketknife!”

I told him. Dad always got giddy about little stuff like that. Those of you who knew him, know what I'm talking about.