My mother always taught me to write thank you notes.
Whether it was for a bracelet from my grandmother that I didn’t really like, a trip to stay at a family member’s home, or a fun night at a friend’s house, I was always taught this simple lesson: write a thank you note. I used to think it was formulaic, dry, disingenuous—why would I thank someone for a present that I didn’t really like, or a family trip I didn’t really want to go on in the first place? Wasn’t this gesture just a forced product of my WASPY upbringing—full of dinner-table-niceties and smalltalk—and not an actual, genuine response to the gift? I was a cynical, always-questioning-authority-young-person, who didn’t like being told what to do. But for some reason, when it came to thank you notes, I did it anyway, despite my grievances. On sage colored stationary monogrammed with my name, on lined notebook paper, on collaged magazine cutouts, I would craft letters of gratitude to grandparents, relatives and family friends. I would thank them for their thought, share a small anecdote, and express hopes to see them again soon. I would sign my name at the bottom and send it off, checking an item off of my to-do list. And for many years, thank you notes were just that—the completion of a task.
And yet, somewhere along the way, my thank you notes started to merge into something more. Letters sent back-and-forth with my aging grandfather, as pen pals. Father’s Day cards sent to my dad as my annual opportunity to open up to him. Thank you notes sent to hiring managers to show them that, though I might not always have the perfect interview responses or resume, I do have it in me to do something thoughtful, and genuine, and from the heart.
These days, in our fleeting digital world, greeting cards are all we have left of that genuineness, and sometimes all we have left of each other. They are a way of sidestepping the screen—that constant influx of images and information and words coming at you one after another after another—and entering into the tactile, the tangible, the real. Someone had to touch them. Had to take out a pen, press it into a piece of paper and make those interesting shapes we know of as letters. Had to hope for enough ink. This person, this real person, comes through to you in a greeting card—comes through in their swooping handwriting, their smudges of ink on the side, their lopsided stamp application. Sending a greeting card is sending a piece of yourself.
And so, it is for this reason that I am so grateful to have stuck it out with greeting cards. I’m so grateful for every time I have had the opportunity to send a thank you note to my boyfriend’s mom (who now jokes that she could offer me a tissue and I’d write her a thank you note). I’m so grateful for every time I get to make a friend a birthday card with an inside joke, or tuck a small love letter under my boyfriend’s pillow. And, I’m so grateful for every time I get to help my customers do the same.
A thank you note is not just a thank you note. A greeting card is not just a greeting card. It is a reaching out, a hand outstretched in the dark, a flag planted in the moon. It was our way of saying “I was here.”
I guess I have another thank you note to send.