Today, I chose to start a new thing.. .
This will be my first ‘blog series’. I’m hoping they will encourage me to write more. Writing has become my therapy and I need it more now than ever! I’m going to write letters to those important people in my life. My goal is to start a new letter each week AND write a little more in at least one previous letter each week as well…. I will probably end up with a huge amount of restrictions and rules for myself, as I always seem to do… but for now, it will be as simple and chaotic as that.
Dear Future Daughter(s) in Law, October 19, 2011
Let me begin by telling you that I’ve dropped the ball as your mother in law. I’m not sure if it’s true that good things get lost in the generation gaps, or whether they just change… adapt. But either way I thought I’d share the things I am worried you will never experience. I want to point out that I’m more or less committing to contradicting this post in it’s entirety, because I am a randomly obsessive perfectionist. Which is probably important for me to throw out there because I drive Mark CRAZY with that, so I’m sure I’ll drive (enter the kid that made you my kid) nuts with it as well. I’m sorry, in advance, for your therapy bill. (Make them write… it’s a guaranteed morale booster in this house).
Anyway. This week, I got a box from Mark’s mom and sisters. They had asked my size and said they found some cute shirts. I expected a box similar to my own mother’s care-packages. A few things for everybody, possibly a few extra for the baby or J since it was his birthday month. But instead, I found an entire box devoted just to me. As each kid rummaged through to see what they got and came up empty-handed, I got increasingly more emotional.
The box not only consisted of the smaller shirts that they had gotten before asking my size, but a few that we obviously added after I joked that the smaller shirts will become my “goal” shirts for losing the baby weight. Also included was my favorite perfume. I want to say I mentioned to Brie (my “sister-in-law” technically, but ‘sister’ in reality) in passing; but never even had around the house to help make the scent jog her memory. Reese’s, which, due to my large mouth is not a secret favorite, lol! And a few other odds and ends… all things I either needed desperately, or love and can’t bring myself to buy for myself.
Then it hit me. This was a “from one mother to another” type of box. There’s no way that Brie and Katy were alone in the content picking. This had a mother’s touch. A true, ‘I’ve been there” type of box. The kind of box that makes you cry passionate, emotional tears of remembrance every time you think about it… type of box.
This box was sent by another stay at home mother of multiple children on a shoe-string budget. And it was sent with love. With gratitude. From the moment you lifted the box flaps, it oozed warmth and happiness. The evidence that time and effort had been placed into it was abundant and tearjerking. I
What does this have to do with what you will be missing out on? I fear I will never have the ability to make the time to get to know my family the way Mark’s family has gotten to know me and mine has Mark. I, by admission, have to be busy. It pains me to stand still and frustrates me to slow. The pace I keep has many casualties. Casualties I never even thought of before, but should have because they’re simple to identify.
So, in lieu of a personalized box of warm, fuzzy, heavenly yumminess; I give you wisdom instead. Take time. Observe. Miss out on a few things in life and you’ll realize the real thing you’ve been missing out on was your own.
