I recently asked my 13-year-old son what the best gift I’ve ever given him was. He answered right away: “Life.” OK, fair enough, I said. But, set that aside.

He thought for a second and then asked for clarification. “Do you mean a physical gift or a mental gift?” (By mental, I think he meant intangible.) I told him to share whatever came to mind. “As far as physical gift, probably the DS,” he said. That’s a handheld game console made by Nintendo that acted like a permanent extension of his hands for several years.

“As far as mentally, teaching me how to get things done,” he added. That’s an interesting choice. I’m pretty sure it’s part of the basic parenting deal -- loving them, providing for them and teaching them how to survive and thrive in this world. I wanted to tell him that’s not a gift; that’s my job. But I appreciated the sweetness of the answer, so I moved on to interrogate the next child.

She’s 16 and far less sentimental in her conversations with me. When I asked her, she answered pretty quickly.

“When you got us Hamilton’ tickets,” she said. A few years back, all we heard in our home were the songs from that Broadway musical. She was obsessed, which got her younger brother into the music, which got us curious, too. When tickets went on sale for a run in Chicago, I spent considerable time online and kept striking out. I called the box office and was able to get tickets for a show more than eight months later. The cost exceeded what I would normally spend on a gift, so I surprised her on Eid (our holiday at the end of Ramadan) with the disclaimer that this would be her Eid and birthday gift for the next year. She freaked out.

We ended up making a family weekend out of it. The months of looking forward to it added to the enjoyment of the experience. This is my child who loves memorable experiences -- concerts, adventures -- and those are my favorite gifts to give, as well. There’s the added bonus of reliving a great memory. To be honest, seeing “Hamilton” was a gift for all of us.

Lastly, I turned to my husband. Neither of us is a fan of receiving expensive gifts from each other. We consult each other on any major purchase, anyway. Once I wanted to surprise him with tickets to a concert we had both wanted to see. My excitement got the better of me, and I told him right after I got the tickets. Turns out, he had planned to buy the same tickets as a surprise for me later that same day.

I already knew the answer to my best gift question, because he’s told me several times that the Breville tea maker I got for one of his birthdays was the best gift ever. He had been eyeing it for a year but was reluctant to spend $250 on a convenience appliance. It makes a perfect cup of tea every morning. He has used it every single day since I gave it to him. It’s always great when someone else buys us something we really want but consider too indulgent to buy ourselves.

All this talk of gifts made me reflect on the best ones I’ve received. Like my son, I created two categories in my mind -- stuff and non-stuff. My favorite physical gifts tend to be the cards, letters, poems and keepsakes the kids make. That stuff is priceless.

The truly best gift, however, my loved ones give far more than once or twice a year.

It’s letting go of all the times I’m less than my best self. It’s overlooking my bad habits and worst mistakes. It’s the love that persists despite living with my flaws and shortcomings.

The best gift is forgiveness.

Winifred Imhof Cook blazed a path on a typewriter.

She grew up in a small town in central Pennsylvania and knew she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps as a journalist. When she graduated from Penn State in 1948, few women worked in the country’s newsrooms as journalists.

“My mom was a pathbreaker,” her daughter, Pam Cook, of the Bay Area, said. Winifred Cook became an editor and writer at the Trenton Times, a daily in New Jersey. Eventually, she joined the staff of the Home News in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where she worked for 25 years as a features writer and one of the first consumer affairs editors in the country.

Nowadays, 70 percent of mothers with children under the age of 18 work in the paid labor force. In the 1950s, Cook was more of an anomaly.

She was the only mother who scheduled parent-teacher conferences in the evening because she worked during the day, her daughter recalled. She knew her male colleagues got paid more than their female counterparts, and the unfairness rankled her, Pam Cook said.

Winifred Cook built her career interviewing noteworthy individuals, like Lucille Ball, Barry Goldwater Jr., Malcolm Forbes and Vidal Sassoon. She investigated consumer issues. The paper nominated her work for a Pulitzer once. She won a string of awards. She made an impression in less obvious ways, as well. A former classmate told Pam Cook decades later that he decided to pursue a career in journalism after their elementary school class visited her mom in the newsroom.

Winifred Cook retired in the mid-‘80s, long before the digital revolution transformed newsrooms. Her stories don’t exist on the internet, but in boxes filled with folders of clips her daughter inherited after her mom passed away in 1995. That year, her former paper merged with the News Tribune of Woodbridge Township. It was later bought by Gannett.

Her daughter has spent years going through boxes of old clips and memorabilia, sending stories and photos to historical societies or libraries who may have an interest in preserving some of it. Earlier this year, Pam Cook came across a clipping in those files from a Life magazine article published in 1953. It was yellowed and delicate, like old paper gets when it ages. Life magazine had written an editorial that was a paean to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's investigative reporting and fearlessness of its editorial page. The piece marked the 75th anniversary of the paper with effusive praise.

Winifred Cook didn’t have any connection to St. Louis or its paper, but the piece must have inspired her when she read it because she had saved it for decades.

Her daughter decided it should go to a female journalist, so she Googled our paper’s website, stltoday.com. She came across the names of features writers, picked one and mailed the old clipping with a short note. Given the turnover in newsrooms these days, she wasn’t sure if the writer even still worked there.

In early August, I had returned from a week’s vacation to a stack of mail in my newsroom mailbox. A package from California caught my eye. Most of my snail mail arrives from somewhere in the Midwest.

I opened it and pulled out a creased and faded page. The words that inspired a trailblazing newswoman about my paper’s courageous editorial page arrived the same week I started writing editorials for that same paper.

It felt like Winifred Imhof Cook was shaking a fist at those attacking journalists today. Perhaps she was encouraging the rest of us to keep on keeping on.

I got that page framed.

It brings to mind the work journalists around the world aim to do. It honors the writers who upheld the values of the Pulitzer platform engraved in our lobby and printed at the top of our editorial section every day -- regardless of the consequences.

Even more, that worn page reminds me of the newswomen who made a space for more voices at the table.

Newspapers have suffered deep cuts in staff and rising attacks on journalists and the freedom of the press itself. The final paragraphs of the Life editorial show how a few things stay the same, and how much everything changes.

"The Post-Dispatch in its 75th successful year is living proof that journalism cannot survive but prosper by speaking its mind and serving as the conscience -- even when a conscience must be irritating -- of democracy."

The paper marked its 140th year of daily publication on Wednesday.

Thanks, Winifred Cook, for the reminder of what endures.

Dorothy Reimers, 74, shared a long-forgotten injustice with her nieces when they were chatting during a recent summer visit.

Her principal had called her into his office a month before graduation during her senior year at Highland High School in Illinois. A four-year honors student, she had been nominated for the National Honor Society (NHS) -- but she wasn’t going to get in. The principal informed her that he was going to give the honor to a boy ranked lower than her because “it would help him on his resume,” she recalled.

Reimers was a shy girl who had grown up on a farm in the country, and didn’t question what the principal told her.

“I was ranked 12th in my high-school class,” she said.

After hearing the story, Anne-Christine Massullo, a superior court judge in San Francisco and Reimers’ niece by marriage, was flabbergasted.

“This makes me so upset for Aunt Dorothy,” she said. She and Reimers’ other nieces describe her as a giver -- a person who never asks for anything and has spent a life sacrificing for others. It’s hard for them, with successful careers, to remember that it wasn’t that long ago that a woman’s options were far more limited.

Reimers said she had never thought of the incident after it happened. But she did get a little teary when she shared the story for the first time. She had not gone to college -- never imagined it was a possibility -- and instead worked as a secretary for 20 years after she graduated. She eventually got married and took care of her husband after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

“She is wicked smart,” said her niece Laura Porter, a musician and business owner in Los Angeles. “We fantasize about everything she could have done with her life if she had even known it was possible.” They imagine she could have run a large corporation.

Later on in the visit, Massullo hatched a plan. She told Porter that she wanted to contact Highland High and ask officials to make their aunt a member of the honor society.

What was the worst that could happen?

The school’s guidance office secretary, Sarah Wiegman, answered when Massullo called in August. Wiegman went into the school’s storage room and pulled the files with old student transcripts. Her research confirmed that Reimers had met the criteria -- and had, indeed, been ranked higher than the boy who was inducted into the NHS back in 1962. She referred the case to the school’s NHS adviser, who presented the facts to NHS senior officers.

They unanimously voted to induct Reimers into the organization as an honorary member.

The nieces decided to surprise their aunt on Thanksgiving with the certificate. First, they asked her to retell the story for the family members gathered.

When Massullo pulled out the certificate, Reimers burst into tears.

“You did this for me?” she asked. Her older brother, now 81, was also crying.

They told her they did it because they love her. And also because she had earned it.

“Nobody had the right to take that from me,” she said, with a hard-earned wisdom. “I worked for that.” Reimers said that if the same thing happened today, when she’s older and wiser, she would never stand for it.

She wonders what happened to the boy who received the honor meant for her. The principal had taken more than an award from her; he had told her that her achievements should benefit a boy. That the boy’s future mattered far more than hers. Reimers lost out on a milestone academic achievement and the possibilities that could have come with it.

“It was stolen from her in that moment,” Porter said.

More than 56 years later, they made sure she got it back.