I started receiving birthday mail yesterday. I got a fantastic card from my wonderful mother as well as one from my Nonno (my mother's father). Of course, the card from my mom was fabulous. The card from Nonno, on the other hand... terrible. Just awful. It's been about 5 years since my grandmother passed away and since then, my Nonno has been writing the cards by himself. He's an incredibly stubborn old Italian man who I just adore. He's not a great writer or much for emotion, so his cards only ever had the words "Love, Nonno" scrawled at the bottom. It might not be prose, but it was him. But NOW he's remarried and his new wife insists on writing something that's actually poetic. While I generally appreciate things like that, in this case, I just want what I already know. Bah.
I also don't like thank you cards. My family is insistent on them. It's practically a crime to get a gift and not respond with a thank you card. So yes... I admit... part of the problem is some sort of leftover teenage rebellion or something. I think that the bigger issue is that I have NO IDEA what to write in a thank you card. I want them all to be different, yet I don't want to spend too much time on them because I know that after a day or two, they'll just be thrown away. It all leaves me with very little to work with. So I think my thank you note to Nonno will go something like this:
Dear Nonno (and Diane... *sigh*),
Thank you so much for the beautiful card! I also really appreciate the $50 that you gave me. I wish I could tell you that I'm doing something fun with it, but I'll probably just do something boringly adult with it like get gas for my car or buy food.
Anyway, thanks for my possibly childish but likely adult gift.
Love,
Your favorite granddaughter (and step-granddaughter... *sigh*)
Ok. It might need a little work.
I feel your pain. Except I even hate getting people cards at all. I don't like receiving them either, unless they are stuffed with cash. It's like "here, someone wrote how I feel about you because I don't care enough to."
ReplyDeleteBut I did find a way to make it fun. For my sister's 30th birthday, my dad asked me to choose a card for her (because he foolishly thinks they are important), and while I walked through the card section, I saw the emotional condolence cards, and got her one of them instead.
It was great, because all the sappy sadness on the condolence card became pure hilarity when associated with her birthday:
"No one can feel the pain you are going through right now. My heart reaches out to yours. Yada yada yada."
My inscription: My condolences on the loss of your twenties. They are gone but never forgotten.
Ha. Perfection.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing you fail to understand about thank you cards: they are ANOTHER opportunity to wield prose in a compelling and readable manner. I procrastinate on them, but once the writing action finally starts I usually surprise myself with what I come up with. Get with the program!
ReplyDelete