Always Say Thank You

one week, three cards!

This has been quite a week for Thank You cards -- I have received three so far!  

Receiving personal snail-mail of any kind is always notable, but three Thank You cards in one week?  That's some kind record.  Makes me think I must be doing something right.  

Actually, what's more true is that other people are most certainly doing something Super Right -- i.e., sending notes to say Thank You, which is always an incredibly thoughtful thing to do. 

This is a super-social season, filled with dinner parties and graduations, so there's plenty of generosity to feel grateful for.  Personally, right now, I am just feeling grateful to those who've taken the time to send their handwritten expressions of thanks, such a lovely habit which we should really and truly never lose.  Becca, Nicole, Heather and Michael: thank you!  No matter how much faster and simpler to write an email, a card is just so much better.  It has life in a way that an electronic communication just can't, no matter how well-worded.

I know this is my training talking.  The Thank You note was a cornerstone of my politeness training, after all, and it lives on in me, deeply, in the form of one of my rules, Always Say Thank You.  It and its companion, Be Invited Back, mean I always have a stack of cards at the ready for just this expression.  I may suck at sending birthday cards, but Thank You cards I can manage.   At Thank You cards I can excel.

There's something so pleasant, I think, about re-living the experience, the birthday or the holiday or the dinner, through the action of choosing the card, and then the words, to send.  For me, it's a kind of reveling in the memory of that moment, celebrating the friendship, the thoughtfulness, all of the deliciousness of time spent together.  So good and tasty both in the giving and in the receiving.

We went to a great party last night, and I was so happy to find the perfect card to send today.  I think it sums things up quite nicely.  And now I just have to find the right way to express the fullness I feel remembering what it was like to be in the company of people I love.  How very precious it is, indeed, to love and be loved.  And how essential to take the time to say it.

perfection!