Last week I received a copy of a note I wrote on September 2, 1976, to the mother of several of my students after attending her mother-in-law’s funeral. The note had been found by her eldest daughter while going through her deceased mother’s personal papers . . . isn’t it amazing that a note which took only minutes to write would be cherished for years by multiple generations?!
Reflecting on that note, I tried to remember what first prompted me to put pen to paper to share a few encouraging thoughts . . . perhaps it was my mother’s insistence that I write thank you notes for every gift and kindness that came my way . . . and perhaps it was nurtured by my maternal grandmother’s custom of responding to my every letter with another containing a crisp dollar bill . . . I simply can’t recall beyond saying that thoughtfulness was an important virtue in my family and therein is surely the genesis.
Countless are the notes I’ve written over the years; countless, too, are the number of grateful replies I’ve received . . . replies that increasingly reflect surprise. Sadly, text messages and emails have become the norm; emojis now suffice for adjectives and adverbs; and punctuation has disappeared along with proper grammar. I’m told it is all in the name of convenience . . . and as Shakespeare would say, “There’s the rub!” Personal notes signal a willingness to inconvenience oneself to honor another – their scarcity these days is revealing!
