On Gratefulness

The label is Italian. I haven't worn it once, ever. 
It's called a tent dress because once you slip it 
over your head, the shape is an upside-down V. 
It's supposed to be "forgiving:" no waistline, 
loose around the hips, stopping just at the knees. 
Some  kind of costly pink fabric, just hanging 
in the back of my closet. A friend I no longer 
speak to (she stopped speaking to me first) 
sent it as a Christmas present some years ago. 
She bought it during one of her many trips 
all over Europe. It came in a box filled with other 
expensive items for the family: designer purses, 
luxurious leather; Russian bonbons, trinkets 
from other far reaches of the earth. From the time 
we sported the same inverted bowl haircuts, we lived 
and grew up in the same small teacup of a city, went 
to the same grade school where the bathrooms had 
no running water or toilet paper. Now, as they say, 
she's made it. But what is it with generosity and 
indebtedness, about how it can also turn the one
receiving a gift into a kind of vassal? Actions
never quite measure up to the benefactor's
yardstick. You wonder if you've really been so
ungrateful, or if after all this time, you were simply  
judged as not good enough at anything you did.