A letter from a reader

Every year there is one woman on my list I never know what to get. This year she carried my present around her house all afternoon

I have never written anything like this before, but since my sister-in-law's birthday the same question keeps coming up, and I have run out of short ways to answer it.

Every year there is one woman on my list I never know what to get. For twenty-six years, that woman has been my sister-in-law, Linda.

Linda is not difficult. She is lovely. She is also the kind of woman who buys herself whatever she wants the moment she wants it, so by the time her birthday comes around in October, and Christmas after that, there is nothing left in the world she needs.

So for twenty-six years I have given her nice things, and for twenty-six years she has opened them, smiled, and said the same four words.

Oh, how thoughtful, Susan.

If you have ever bought a present for a woman over sixty, you know that voice. It is warm and it is polite, and it means the present is going into a closet.

I know, because I have a closet like that myself. It is in our upstairs hall, and it is where I keep the presents I buy ahead "for whoever": a candle or two, a good gray scarf, a few gift cards in their envelopes, a bath set in a little basket.

Linda has had things off that shelf more than once. A nice candle. A cashmere-blend scarf. One year, and I am not proud of it, a gift card tucked inside a birthday card. She thanked me for every one of them, and I never saw any of them again.

How it happens

By our age, the women we love have spent forty years buying their own things. They have the good pans and the warm coat. Their drawers are full.

So we stop trying to find the thing she wants, because she already has it, and we reach for something nobody could object to. A candle smells nice. A scarf is always useful. A gift card lets her choose.

Every one of those is a kind present. And every one of them says the same thing underneath: I didn't know what to get you. She hears it, too. That is what the four words are for.

What I had wrong

For years I thought the answer was to spend more. If I could not find the right thing, at least I could find a costly one. That scarf cost more than I like to admit.

Here is what I had wrong. A woman who has everything is not short of things. She is short of being known. The present she keeps is the one that shows you were paying attention, the one that could only ever have been for her.

The price has nothing to do with it. The right present for Linda was never going to be the expensive one. It was going to be the one with her in it.

The one I gave Linda

Linda has kept cats all her life. Her old tom, Jasper, had one gold eye and one pale blue one, and his picture is still on her refrigerator twelve years after he went.

Tom and I found Wentworth & Rowe on our anniversary trip to Charleston a few springs ago. It is a small family shop on King Street, open since 1998, and this is the first fall they have sold online, which I will come back to. In early October I was looking through their bags for myself, not for anybody else.

Then I saw the Doriane. It is a big quilted tote with a cat's face across the whole front, half midnight black and half gold. One eye is amber gold. The other is pale blue.

I said "Jasper" out loud, to nobody, at my own kitchen table.

What I did not expect, when it came, was how it is made. It is not flat, the way a printed bag is. The whole front is quilted, so the lines of the picture are stitched and sit up off the bag in soft relief. My mother quilted, and I know the difference between a picture on fabric and one that has been sewn into it. You can run a finger along the lines around the eyes.

It is a proper bag, too, which matters more than people think. It is roomy and holds its shape instead of slouching, the two handles sit easily on the shoulder, and it will carry a laptop, a book and everything in between.

What happened at Linda's birthday

We had cake at her kitchen table, the way we do every year. I watched her fold back the tissue paper and braced myself for the four words.

They did not come. She went quiet. She lifted it out by the handles, held it up in front of her, and looked at it for a long moment. Then she said, "Susan. That's Jasper."

She did not put it down for the rest of the afternoon. She carried it from the kitchen to the living room and back again, and when we left it was hanging on the back of her chair where she could see it.

The next morning she sent me a photograph of it on her shoulder outside the grocery store. No message. Just the picture.

In twenty-six years, nobody has ever photographed a present I gave them.

Ever since, Linda's friends keep asking her the same thing: "Where did you find that bag?" And she keeps sending them to me.

Then I did the rest of my list

I do my Christmas shopping in October. I always have. Tom calls it showing off. I call it keeping December for myself.

So I went back to Wentworth & Rowe, and this time I was looking for people.

The Edmee is for my friend Joan, who has not left the house without a paperback in thirty years. It is cream, with a tall stack of old books rising out of a meadow of daisies and wildflowers.

The Elisande is for my niece, Katie, who reads past midnight with a black cat asleep on her feet. It is midnight blue, with a black cat curled on a stack of books under an arched window and hydrangeas all around it.

Thirty of them

They make thirty of these bags, each with a different picture, and it is not all cats and books. There is a sleeping dachshund on warm patchwork, sunflowers scattered with little blue butterflies, a flock of woolly sheep, sea turtles, owls and hummingbirds.

One more thing, since the button on this page takes you to all of them: the Doriane is one of thirty bags Wentworth & Rowe make. Linda's is the first one you will see.

Three things I have learned about giving

One. Give her a picture of what she loves. Her cat, her garden, her books, her dog. She will know in one look that you were paying attention, and nothing you can buy says that better.

Two. Give her something she will use. A candle burns down and a gift card gets spent. A bag goes out of the house with her, and every time she picks it up she remembers who gave it to her.

Three. Expensive is not the same as right. The most I ever spent on Linda bought me four polite words. One of the least bought me a photograph.

About the price

I want to be plain about this, because it matters when you are buying for more than one person.

Each one is $59.95. It was $149.95.

My first thought was that something must be wrong with them. Then one arrived and I held it.

Here is the reason, as far as I can tell. Wentworth & Rowe has been a shop you had to walk into on King Street since 1998, and this is their first fall selling online. They are marking it with a sale, the way a shop does when it opens a new door. There is no catch that I have found.

I read the small print before I ordered, as I expect you are doing now. Shipping is free in the US, and you have thirty days to send it back if it is not right, which is a comfort when you are choosing for somebody else.

For about what that scarf cost me, I have done three people on my list.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If we were sitting at Linda's kitchen table and you asked me, this is what I would tell you.

Think of the woman on your list you never know what to get. Not what she needs, because she needs nothing. Think about what she loves: the cat on her lap, the dog at her feet, the garden she talks about all winter, the book she is halfway through.

Then go and look at the thirty. I would be surprised if she is not in there somewhere.

The First Fall sale is on now, and the most popular sizes go first.

Linda tells me she has already worked out which one she is giving me for Christmas. For the first time in twenty-six years, I cannot wait to open hers.

Susan