*Phone Rings.*

Me: “Hiiiiiiiyyyeee!”
Grams: “Oh, shit!  I accidentally called you!  I didn’t mean to do that.  I was trying to delete you.”
Me: “You were deleting me?!”
Grams: “It was an old message.  I didn’t mean to call back.  I wanted to delete the call.”
Me: “I can’t believe you’re deleting me.  I’m going to cry myself to sleep tonight.”
Grams: “Alright, Darling.”
Me: “…….”
Grams: “OkayIloveyoubye.”

It’s funny (the way awkward moments are funny) that I am now suddenly (or rather, haltingly) incapable of throwing away a simple birthday greeting.  When I was younger I never disposed of a single greeting card.  I felt that they were a palpable, tangible link binding me to that split moment when one makes a conscious decision to do something nice for you.  They were tokens of kindness.  And I thought that one day when I was old and bored, I’d revisit them one by one, remembering that St. Patrick’s Day in 1993 when my mother would make green pancakes for us kids before school, and there would be a card full of glitter and a two dollar bill from my grandparents.  I held on to the card.  I parted with the two dollar bill.

When my parents split and there was a lot of moving from house to dorm, from dorm to house, from house to house, from house to apartment, from apartment to house, from house to house again, and so forth; I threw away my coveted box of greeting cards.  Something about moving so frequently makes a person evaluate and re-evaluate what’s worth all of the nomadic hauling.  As my responsibilities grew my priorities changed.  And before I really knew what was happening, I’d given up on a future designated nostalgic hobby for the sake of practicality.  Now to this day I will spend an appropriate amount of time appreciating greetings of all sorts before eventually tossing them out.  Still there are a select few that I keep for keep’s sake.  And they live in new boxes with new purposes and a better sense of commitment, for I’ve promised myself that these.  These I keep.

My birthday was only a handful of days ago and with it came many greeting cards.  One particularly on time each year and without fail, personalized just enough to be genuinely heart warming and smile inducing without being contrived.  I recognize the arpeggios quality to the lettering long before having to read the signature.  It’s not only the thought that counts in this case, but the consistency.  Each year it never fails to surprise me that I’m so well remembered.  And it makes me wonder how many other people in my family had taken notes from her over the years.  Mental jots to be more like her.  To be a more sincere, kind, accepting, encouraging, and loving version of ourselves.  My mother wrote me a beautiful letter on my sixteenth birthday, and I always wondered if it was inspired in part by the letters our Aunt Glenna wrote to my mother when my mother was younger.  My Great Aunt Glenna had a way of making the simplest of happenstance into a brilliantly poignant moment (assuming you were paying attention enough to catch it).  And I’m so happy to see that some of those parts of her rubbed off on parts of us.  It’s the smaller things with the greater impact that truly stick.

Yesterday morning when my mom called me to tell me that Aunt Glenna had passed away suddenly, all I could muster up through the “whats?!” and the tears was, “But she JUST sent me a birthday card.  I haven’t even had a chance to send a “thank you” note yet.” The rest of the day was a complete blur of emotional unrest and sorrow for the loss of such a warming light.  And when I got home, I couldn’t help but sift through my stack of recently acquired cards to find the one from her and my Uncle Louis with its simple humor and simple warmth on a simple, glossy card stock.  I arranged the card to the top of the stack and just stared at it as I felt rather expeditiously that this card.  This card I keep.