I was just over at my mom's house visiting with her and looking through her Christmas cards. She has received over fifty cards so far this year and nearly every one had a handwritten paragraph or two on the card itself or a personal letter - not the generic kind - tucked inside. The notes were filled with updates, warm sentiments, and remembrances of times the sender shared with Mom over the past year. I can honestly say that awaiting the mailman's arrival and the day's bounty of cards have become one of the highlights of her day. She treasures each message and the connection she has with her friends across the country.
The interesting thing is, Mom doesn't just receive these cards and messages at Christmas. She really makes an effort, and has for as long as I can remember, to stay in contact with people that she cares about. While she telephones those who are closest to her, sending cards and letters is her chosen form of communication. A few weeks ago she was telling me what was happening in the life of the woman who used to clean her house in Illinois and I was surprised that she even knew. She had written to Angie, she explained to me, and Angie had sent her a nice long letter back. Mom showed me a card she received from Elena, the home health care nurse who looked after my sister when she was sick. Elena had recently had a baby, so she sent a photo of her growing family. I was amazed that she had maintained contact with someone who had passed in and out of our lives two years ago. Mom explained to me that Elena had been a godsend to my sister with her gentle touch and compassionate words. Months after my sister had died, Elena had had her baby and Mom had sent a baby gift. From that moment they continued to keep in touch - perhaps only a birthday and Christmas card, but both still choosing to make the effort.
It really got me thinking. Back when I was a girl still living at home with my parents, I had several "pen pals." Of course this was long before computers and smart phones so there were no emails, texts or Skype. Each day's bulging mailbox was full of possibilities - who would I get a letter from today? Now, sadly, it is mostly sales circulars and junk mail that I receive. I realize that I have done a great deal to contribute to this lack of written communication in my own life. For the past few years I have pared my Christmas card list down or not sent cards at all. I barely remember to send birthday cards, and when I do, they are often hastily mailed with only an obligatory sentence or two dashed off inside, but devoid of the kind of message that would have required time and thought. And letters? Hah! I've even gotten behind in emails more often than not because my life is so busy. I've even noticed that when I write more than a paragraph in cursive, my hand hurts a little. How sad.
I miss having a stack of letters tied with a a pretty ribbon to read and re-read. I miss the excitement of posting a letter to a far-away friend or cousin, knowing that in a week or two an envelope would be waiting for me when I came home. I used to receive Christmas cards from people I hadn't seen in years and those cards were our one connection to catch up and hear what was going on in our respective lives. This year, I didn't even get a fraction of the ones I got like clockwork each year in the past.
If I am to make any resolutions for the new year, perhaps this is a good place to start. There is real beauty and goodness in the act of putting pen to paper to share our thoughts and feelings with the people in our lives. Merely taking time out of our day to do this is an implied act of thoughtfulness and care and the words themselves - well, they can be the kind of message that's appreciated and can brighten someone else's day or they can be letters that are put away to be savored over and over again throughout the years.
I remember a friend once told me that you only get out of life what you put into it. It seems to me that putting more effort into staying connected with the people in my life will be something that I will never regret spending precious minutes of my life on.
When I woke up this morning I didn't have any intentions for the day beyond enjoying time with my granddaughter and a friend's little boy, doing some laundry and writing out a few Christmas cards. You know what I mean - one of those unscripted but predictable days that would most likely play out like so many others, absent the manic highs and lows that drama often brings.
For the past week or two I had been thinking about Laurie, an old friend from my high school and college days, that I had lost touch with way back in the 70's. Laurie and I met while working Saturdays and summers at Capper & Capper, a men's clothing store in the Chicago Loop, while we were both in high school. I liked her immediately - she was a bit brash and occasionally irreverent with a razor sharp wit and and a wicked sense of humor. We had scads of inside jokes and our own nicknames for the powers-that-be at work which kept us in stitches.
On our lunch hour we would walk over to St. Peter's Catholic Church and she would attempt to school me in Catholic doctrine while I was seduced by the scent of melting wax, flickering candles and beautiful statues. These trips to St. Peter's and Laurie's private catechism class were my first real encounters with Catholicism, and though I didn't make the decision to convert until I was in college, I have no doubt that Laurie was responsible for opening that door for me. This, for me, was a life changing event and one I never, for one second regretted.
She and I went to see Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet the night it opened, then took the train back to her house in La Grange and spent the night up talking about the breathtaking beauty of the film. We both bought the soundtrack and memorized huge chunks of dialog (which I can still recite to this day). We had ice cream sundaes for breakfast while at her house with her mom's full approval - something that would never have happened at my buttoned down home- and laughed it off since ice cream was a dairy product. These might seem like small, inconsequential things as you read them, but all these years later, they are such lovely, indelible memories.
During the kid's nap time today, I finally got on the computer and spent about 20 minutes doing various internet searches trying to find Laurie. And what I found was that Laurie had died in 2003 - eleven whole years ago. Though I had lost track of her and hadn't even spoken to her for almost forty years, I felt like I was punched in the gut. I was filled with sadness for her early passing, for her family, and for the missed opportunity to tell her how much I still treasure those crazy adventures we had so long ago. How I can so easily recall doubling over in laughter over something funny she said; how she started me off on my faith journey; how I can still picture the two of us as if it was yesterday, walking down Madison street bundled up in our winter wear eating Fannie May candy out of paper bags.
It got me thinking, once again, about my own mortality and what sort of legacy I would be leaving. I'm pretty sure, by this stage in my life, that I'm not going to be one of those people who goes down in the history books for doing something to change the world. After initially feeling sort of bummed that my life may end up being unremarkable in many ways, I realized that my purpose and legacy didn't have to be worthy of history books or the evening news. Legacies and what we leave for those who have been in our life's orbit can be as simple as the kind of memories that Laurie left for me. My initial wave of sadness at Laurie's passing gave way to gratefulness that I still had those fabulous memories to draw on - even though I didn't have the chance to tell her how much it meant to me. My hope is, that whenever I'm gone, someone (and hopefully more than one person) will think about me years later and remember something we did or something I said. I need to start each morning truly excited about the possibilities the day might offer and not settle for sleepwalking through it on auto pilot. Because you never know how the smallest daily interaction will be remembered down the road and if I live my life, really live my life, hopefully my legacy will be greater than "she was nice."
