Bill Ervolino

Happy Sunday!! I love to read Bill Ervolino in The Record on Thursdays and Sundays. He is Italian and writes the funniest stories about his Italian family. The post below is his latest article and I was laughing because this is how my family is. It's all about the envelope and how much to put in. For those who are not Italian, I am so sorry for you, HA!

Ervolino: Family finds joy in the endless recycling of cash gifts
Sunday, March 27, 2011
LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY MARCH 27, 2011, 10:03 AM

By BILL ERVOLINO
COLUMNIST

My parents can't tell you what they had for lunch yesterday but they can tell you what my mother's cousin Annabelle gave them as a wedding present in 1949.

Or, was it 1948?

"Isn't that funny?" my mother asked last weekend. "I can never remember what year we got married."

But: "Annabelle and her husband put $25 in the envelope."

"Annabelle and George?" I asked.

"No, George was her second husband. Her first husband was ... oh, who remembers? The one with the funny nose."

When I was growing up, the word "gifts" only came up at Christmas. For every other occasion, we used "envelopes."

Weddings? Envelopes. Anniversaries? Envelopes.

We even brought envelopes to funerals.

"Oh, Aunt Marie, I'm so sorry for your loss. But ... here's $75!"

I was reminded of this last Saturday, as my family prepared to surprise my sister-in-law Joyce on the occasion of her 50th birthday — which [ahem] isn't until May.

I'm not sure what the bigger surprise was: that Joyce's sister Carol was throwing this lavish bash at all, or that she was throwing it two months before Joyce's birthday.

As Carol explained: "Joyce said she absolutely did not want a party. If we tried to do it, and planned it closer to her birthday, she wouldn't have come. So we decided to do it in March."

Fine. Whatever. Let's just get this over with.

I knew what time I had to be there. I knew what I was wearing. And I knew what I had to yell: "Surprise! Don't blame us! It's all Carol's fault!"

The only other matter yet to be determined was The Envelope.

In the early '90s, my gift-phobic family had an infallible formula for birthdays: Everybody gave everybody else $50. I gave my mother $50 on her birthday. She gave my brother $50 on his birthday. He gave my father $50 on his birthday. And so on and so forth.

Sounds exciting, doesn't it?

In retrospect, I'm not even sure why we bothered going to the bank to withdraw the cash we put in these envelopes. We could have just passed a wet tea bag around the table and, by the end of the year, still wound up with the same amount of money in our pockets.

Eventually, though, the $50 was raised to $100. Then, to further complicate matters, my niece was born.

The following year, my brother and Joyce gave me a combined gift of $300, even though I had only given them $100 each.

"What's this?" I asked, as three crisp $100 bills fluttered into my lap.

As Joyce explained, "It's $100 from me, $100 from your brother and $100 from Talia."

"From Talia?" I asked, incredulously. "Please don't tell me she's working already. I just changed her diaper 10 minutes ago."

"Well, of course not," Joyce replied. "But you give to her and ... what are we supposed to do?"

Things were equally confusing last weekend. Since Joyce gave me a nice (non-surprise) party for my 50th birthday, I had no idea what to give her for hers, since I didn't know what she spent on the party. My mother had already decided, though: She and my father were giving a check for $500.

Dad thought a check was tacky. "Give it to her in $50 bills," he said.

"Cash?" my mother screamed. "I'm not bringing an envelope with all that money in it to a restaurant!"

This argument raged on, with lots of yelling, snide remarks, banging frying pans etc.

Eventually, my brother Donald intervened. "I know my wife," he said to my parents. "If you give her a check, she won't cash it."

My mother later discussed this with me, mulled it over and finally decided, "Donald's right. I hate the idea of walking around with all of that cash in an envelope, but ..."

"Fine," I replied. "Just stop TALKING about it."

"And, what about you?" my mother continued. "Do you know what you're putting in the envelope?"

"I'm still not sure," I said. "It's been a bad month, expense-wise. I was just going to give her a check for $200. But if she's not going to cash it, I may as well give her a check for $250."

My mother rolled her eyes. "Do you need money? I have $250 under the plant in the dining room."

"Is that your emergency money?" I asked.

"No, that's my mad money. My emergency money is in a plastic bag behind the refrigerator."

As it turned out, my brother was wrong: Joyce deposited my $250 check and returned my parents' cash.

"She left it on my dining room table on Sunday," Mom said.

In an envelope.

E-mail: ervolino@northjersey.com