The other day, my father asked me what he should do about holiday presents for his grandchildren.

Dad is in his mid-90s. He’s nearly blind and hasn’t driven for years, so going to the mall isn’t an option. And even before he lost most of his sight, the only uses he had for computers were as doorstops or paperweights, which eliminated shopping online as a possibility.

I told him not to worry about it.

I said he should give my children something more important.

I really knew only one of my grandparents—my grandfather on my mom’s side. My grandmother on Mom’s side died before I was born. My grandparents on Dad’s side lived far away and had their own troubles, troubles that left them with little time for or interest in grandchildren.

The grandfather I did know I adored.

In part, that was because he spent time with me. A career educator—a schoolteacher and principal—he never talked down to me, my siblings or our cousins.

He told us stories. Many of them were about his boyhood on a farm in the hills of Southern Indiana and about how he became the first member of his family to attend and graduate from college.

When I was with him, I didn’t realize that he was teaching us things. I thought he was talking just to pass the time.

It was only as I got older that I understood that most of his stories had a point. More than a few had a moral.

One story, in particular, has stayed with me for nearly 50 years. Grandpa told me about how he came to compete on the track team when he was in college.

My grandfather was a small, round-shouldered and not very athletic man. He never had much interest in sports of any kind.

But he burned to learn. For that reason, going to and staying in college was almost a holy mission for him.

When he learned that he could receive a $100 scholarship—a lot of money a century ago—for running the mile, Grandpa vowed to do it.

There was a hitch, though.

A farm boy who was working his way through college, he had no money to buy track shoes. So, he decided to run barefoot.

The track at his college in those days was a cinder one, Grandpa told me. It tore up his bare feet when he ran on it.

But he kept going because, he said, going to college was the only way he was going to be able to build the life he wanted for himself and his descendants. He kept running even when his feet bled because nothing was going to stop him from doing something that mattered that much.

I understood why he told me that story when I found myself remembering it when I had a difficult but essential task to perform or painful challenge to meet.

Years later, I also realized that he was telling me something else. He was reminding me that whatever triumphs or successes I might experience, they weren’t mine alone.

Generations of ancestors had endured hardships to make my life and its opportunities possible. Some crossed an ocean and fought wars. Still others left the farm and ventured off to college. And at least one ran until his feet left bloody prints on a cinder track to change the destiny of his family.

That was my grandfather.

My father also has not had an effortless life. He and his older brother spent a significant slice of their childhoods in an orphanage. They, too, were the first members of their family to graduate from college.

I told Dad that my grandfather had given me presents every birthday and Christmas, but I couldn’t remember any of the material things he gave me without effort.

The stories, though, have stayed with me throughout my life.

At times, they have shaped my life.

So, I told my own father to give his grandchildren a much greater gift than some trinket.

Tell them a story, I said. Let them know where they came from and how we got to this point.

That’s how we’re going to spend this Christmas.

I hope your holidays are satisfying and memorable, too.