The other day, my husband and I were discussing the art of thank you note writing with my father and his wife, Emmy, who were visiting from out of town. My dad made a comment along the lines of "Thank you notes are Emmy's responsibility (translation: the woman's job)." Dan, my typically silent husband, chose that particular moment to actually contribute to the joviality of the moment.
"What's a thank you note?" he asked with a little smirk.
Emmy and my dad laughed. I'm pretty certain my dad said, "Good one, Dan."
I rolled my eyes at Dan's comedic timing (and at my father's borderline sexist comment) and informed my family that a little over six years ago, Dan really didn't know what a thank you note was.
Perhaps he knew the definition of a thank you note. He just saw the writing of thank you notes as an unnecessary evil, an archaic practice implemented by the Establishment to turn us all into etiquette-conscious conformists.
When Dan and I were married, I introduced him to the correct way of writing thank you notes and somehow convinced him that, "Yes, we do have to write a thank you note for every wedding gift, even the ones we're planning on returning."
"Can't we just print out a generic note with a fill-in-the-blank for each item?"
"Emily Post says thank you notes should always be handwritten."
"Who?"
"Never mind."
We split the task of writing our wedding thank yous. However, when I discovered that one of his notes read, "Thank you for the towel. Dan and Becky," I realized I had better make sure all of his notes met my more-than-one-sentence standard before mailing them off.
I was raised writing thank you notes for everything. I had a grandmother and a great Aunt Alice who expected a thank you note the week after every birthday and holiday that includes gifts. Considering they lived in southern Illinois and I lived in Boise, Idaho, that meant I practically had to write my thank you notes on Christmas day.
And if I didn't get the thank you notes out in time, my poor mother would get the brunt of it.
"Well, Alice is mad because she hasn't gotten a thank you note from Becky." "I just don't know what could have happened to Becky's thank you note. Maybe it's lost in the mail. Should I call the post office?"
"Don't call the post office," my mother would say. "Becky always sends a thank you note. I'm sure she's just a little behind."
Then my mother would call me and beg me to hurry up and write my thank you notes. Sometimes, I would have to write two or three because my grandmother and Aunt Alice would forget they had received them.
Occasionally, when they were happy with my timeliness, they would spend their phone conversations with my mother reading her the thank you notes I had sent.
Now that I am the one who talks to my grandmother and Aunt Alice on the phone, I hear about all of the thank you notes they receive from my brother, from Dan, from my dad, and of course, from me.
About two years ago, my Aunt Alice said, "You have always been so good about sending your thank you notes out right away. You're just like your mother. She would be so proud." I think that was the nicest compliment I had ever been given, even if it did revolve around a silly archaic practice of societal conformity.
Here's why:
When I was seven years old, a boy named Jeremiah in my second grade class showed up at my front door with a vase of fresh cut flowers.
"You want these?" he asked, thrusting the flowers into my face.
"Sure," I said and slammed the door in his face.
My mother made me write him a thank you note. It was the most embarrassing thing I ever had to do during those first seven years of my life.
"It doesn't matter if you wanted the flowers or not. He did something nice for you. Now you need to show your gratitude."
I didn't tell my mom that when I handed Jeremiah the thank you note I told him that my mother had made me write it. And I didn't tell her that I gave him the note like I was 007 delivering a top secret formula for a nuclear bomb, lest some other second grader would see me and think I had a crush on him.
Later we found out he had stolen the vase from his mother's collection, and he had been chased out of one of my friend's yards for cutting flowers from her dad's garden. I probably wrote a thank you note for an item that should have ended up on the black market.
But that wasn't the point. The moral of my mother's lesson was one of self-sacrifice, doing things you really don't want to do in order to show a little kindness once in a while. And if writing thank you notes is the one way I can be a little less self-absorbed, I'll participate in that unnecessary evil any day.
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