When The Daughter was born, we received some lovely and generous gifts from friends and family. Being raised correctly, we tried to send out thank you notes right away. But we were tired, trying to get a handle on this parenting thing.
Finally, in October 2004, only seven months later, we wrote up a bunch of cards of appreciation. Not so bad, really.
My wife reminds me that we were even better with our wedding presents from 1999. The notes went out within three weeks, not bad since we spent nearly a week in Barbados. There were a couple items we were unable to identify – who gave us the $100 J.C. Penney gift card? – but for the most part, we were properly appreciative in a timely manner. And necessarily so, since the presents had taken over the living room.
This past winter, I was wading through a bunch of miscellaneous boxes that had made their way to the attic. I FOUND a handful of thank you cards from 2004! They were in envelopes, the cards filled with personalized messages about the special gifts people had gotten for us. The names were on the envelopes but not addresses; presumably we were going to look them up. They had 37 cent stamps already attached.
I was mortified and immediately threw them back into the box, much like how one might take bills one cannot afford to pay and stuff them into a drawer, irrationally hoping they will go away, which, for the record, seldom works.
So apologies to Jack in my current choir and his wife Sue, and to Lori from my previous choir. Those are the only names I saw before I stopped looking. Apologies to whomever else we failed to fulfill our social obligation.
Maybe next time I find them, I will put on the additional postage and actually mail them out. Hey, Lori, where ARE you in Florida? I’ve lost track.
