Everyone likes to receive personal mail. Everyone likes to know that someone is thinking about him or her. it must be a very sad thing to live alone and day after day receive little more than junk mail. Even one card with a personal message can brighten a day or a week.
In today's computer age, it is quite easy to send an email. And an e-note is always welcome, at least in my in-box. One can also send cards via email with personalized messages, and those are welcome, too. However, there is still little that can surpass the ability of a handwritten card to put a smile on someone's face.
When my best friend, an elderly Russian lady, and I first became close more than ten years ago, I would send her holiday cards. Holiday cards, however, are sometimes near perfunctory, and so they have less significance than spontaneous cards.
I found out the value of the spontaneous card when I once offended my friend. I sent her an "I'm sorry" card. When I saw how much she appreciated that card, I sent her friendship cards and encouragement cards and "just because" cards. Over time, I began to make up reasons to send cards, and when I traveled, I looked for new cards from exotic places to send to her. Mostly, I looked for original friendship verses. I would bring back extras to send to her on the weeks that I was home.
I love her very much, and she knows it. She has a house full of cards to prove it.
She loves me very much, and I know it. She frequently comes to my rescue, shares important information or experience, and helps me out in all sorts of imaginable and unimagined ways.
I have also sent spontaneous cards to employees. I sent them as congratulations for accomplishments and special events, as thank-you notes for work well done, and as encouragement during periods of stress. Sometimes, instead of cards, I send a handwritten note or flowers. The message is the same: Some has noticed and cares. That is a pretty powerful message.
Years ago when I moved from a large house to a recreational vehicle, I had to eliminate a large number of accumulated possessions. While weeding through (and weeding out) things, I came across scores of cards from former employees who had reacted in kind: congratulations, thank-you notes, and cards of encouragement. I found a place for them in my smaller quarters. One does not "weed out" things of such value.
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Excerpted and adapted from a collection of vignettes I published, copyright 2003.
About Me
- Elizabeth Mahlou
- I am the mother of 4 birth children (plus 3 others who lived with us) and grandmother of 2, all of them exceptional children. Married for 42 years, I grew up in Maine, live in California, and work in many places in education, linguistics, and program management. In my spare time, I rescue and tame feral cats and have the scars to prove it. A long-time ignorantly blissful atheist converted by a theophanic experience to Catholicism, I am now a joyful catechist. Oh, I also authored a dozen books, two under my pen name of Mahlou (Blest Atheist and A Believer-in-Waiting's First Encounters with God).
Recommended Reading List
Because I am blog inept, I don't quite know how to get a reading list to stay at the end of the page and not disappear from sight. Therefore, I entered it as my first post. I suppose that is not all that bad because readers started commenting about the books, even suggesting additional readings. So, you can participate with others in my reading list by clicking here.I do post additional books as I read them and find them to be meaningful to me, and therefore, hopefully, meaningful to you. One advantage of all the plane traveling I do is that I acquire reading time that I might not otherwise take.
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