Thank You for Thanking Me

I forgot to thank my grandma for the thank you card. My mom passed along the inquiry, "If you received it, Akemi, please just call her and tell her you received it."

"But Mom!" I want to whine, but I suppress the adolescent in me and say instead, "OK, sure."

Since my grandma is thanking me for a gift I gave to her, it's sort of like I'm thanking her for thanking me. My mother and grandmother are caught in an unending circle of politesse. I do get it - my very sweet grandma just wants to know if her handwritten thank you note has made it safely into my mail box, and then into my hands. I know I should make the courtesy call, but sometimes, especially now that I have kids, I forget.

I make the call.

"Thank you for the thank you card,"  I gush to my delighted grandma.

Thank you notes run in our family, a maternal side legacy. I remember toiling over what to say in thank you cards when I was a little girl. My mom used to buy me thank you note cards and give them to me as a stocking stuffer gift. As we opened presents for birthdays and at Christmas, we'd always assign one person to write down what we'd received and from whom. I used to like reminiscing over those lists as I'd write my thank you notes. I always enjoyed the process of putting pen to paper and sometimes, I'd even use my fancy Venetian glass dip pen to try to make my sloppy handwriting look fancy.

I'd later put my little pile of completed note cards on the table and my mom would mail them off. It was such a satisfying sight, that little pile. It wasn't until years later that I realized that I rarely veered from my standard thank you card wording.

Dear Uncle Jerry,

It was so nice to see you just before Christmas. I'm enjoying my week off from school.Thank you for the money. You were very generous! I put it in the bank.

Have a wonderful holiday. Happy New Year!

Love, Akemi

Uncle Jerry has many of my thank you notes pasted into his scrapbook. I was all grown up when he showed me that scrapbook. And there they were, an archive of my thank you notes through the years. To my horror, each one said practically the same thing, "Thanks for the money. I put it in the bank." My wording may have been unoriginal, but it was sincere.

I was so good about writing thank you notes. But that all changed when I had kids. I so rarely put pen to paper these days. I much prefer expressing my gratitude to someone via email and yet, I still feel like I should write thank you notes and mail them out the old-fashioned way. I'm always tapping away at my keyboard, couldn't I also tap out a few thank you notes?

My twins, at age 4, are finally old enough to "help" me write their thank you notes. I try to get them to draw a picture or sign their names, but mostly my goal is to introduce them to the process of thanking someone. I want them to show gratitude. Still, sometimes it's weeks or even months before I manage to mail off our thank you notes. I think I even let a few slip (oh, the guilt!). I struggle to set a good example.

Sometimes I wonder if thank you notes are a dying tradition. I'm almost at the point where I might email an acknowledgment to my generation of friends but still stick to the tried and true handwritten thank you notes for my grandmother and others of her generation.

We went to quite a few birthday parties this year, bearing gifts. We received thank you notes for less than half the gifts we gave. Is it that we just give our kids too much stuff? Are there too many themed birthday parties with too many guests? (Last year, we invited 20 children to a very fun party at Goldstar Gymnastics.) When I was 8 years old, I had eight kids over for a home birthday party. Eight gifts received, eight thank you notes written, eight tails on a donkey. Simplicity all around.

True, the "thank you for thanking me" thing I have going on with my mom and grandma is a bit extreme. Although I've cut way back on my gift giving because we simply cannot afford it, I do choose my gifts with care. So a blanket "thanks for the gift" note from Evite doesn't tell me whether or not my gift got somehow dumped into another birthday kid's bin at Pump it Up. As Kari mentioned in her recent post, sometimes it just seems as if our gifts don't mean anything.

Original Silicon Valley Moms Blog post.

Akemi/svtwinmom quietly celebrated her twins' October birthday at home with immediate family. She would like to thank her friends Nora and Lisa for bestowing gifts upon her kids nonetheless and promises to write thank you notes before Christmas. Akemi blogs at Mad About Multiples and Chalk and Cheese Chronicles.