One of the things that is amazing about being sick is the response you get from people. The day after I came home from my sternotomy, for example, food was delivered to us from my wife's co-workers at ESPN. We had known that they were going to get us some grocery supplies to help out while I was busy recovering, but the poor delivery person had to make a multitude of trips up our stairs to get all the food up. I'm talking about four or five trips from a delivery woman who is used to hauling quite a bit up in a single trip. It was simply amazing.
A few days later, I opened the door, and found a box outside. From the look of it, it was flowers, which is kind of what you would expect. But when I opened it, I found that my guess was only half right. It was actually flower bulbs in three flower pots, plus a beautiful window box to put them all in. My first thought was that it was nice that someone knows me well enough to know that I would enjoy growing the flowers rather than getting cut flowers that wouldn't last, and my second thought was that it was going to be neat to show my girls how the flowers grow. The gift and two cards filled with well wishes and signatures, had come from my co-workers at AT&T.
The final surprise came a few days later, right before Easter. Two more boxes had mysteriously landed at our door and when we brought them inside and opened them, we found two green wheelbarrows stuffed with Easter goodies for the girls. Best of all, each wheelbarrow was personalized with the name of one of our girls. What a great gift! Like the food and the flowers, it was something that would help the girls feel special and perhaps let them know that the world was a good place. It was another gift from my co-workers, and I was touched.
I still find it hard to say why, but the food, flower bulbs, and wheelbarrows meant more to me than anything else our co-workers could have done. I guess it meant to me that they know me and Alecia well enough to know that our primary concern as I was recovering would be in taking care of our girls, and making sure they weren't picking up on any stress we might have. I think that is why it touched me so much to get those thoughtful gifts. I didn't need gifts to know that all our friends were thinking of us, but it really meant a lot to know that they were there to help all of us.
So of course, being brought up with some manners, I really wanted to say thank you to all those people who gave us gifts. In fact, on the day we got the groceries, we were so touched by the generosity, that I immediately wrote an e-mail and sent it. But being somewhat traditional, I wanted to do more.
Now the tradition at AT&T is to pin a thank you note to a bulletin board so that everyone there can see and enjoy the thank you. Since I lost count of the people on the distribution soliciting for the gift for me somewhere around thirty, I decided early on that I would adopt this method for the thank you for my co-workers.
The situation was different for the guys from ESPN, though. First of all, there were only eleven of them. Second of all, the bulletin board thank you note doesn't seem to be a tradition there (I asked my wife). Third, and most importantly, it had meant so much to us to get the gift from them. (By the way, lest I forget, the two teams had also given us some spending money - left over after all their other generosity.) Alecia and I agreed that we should give everyone a thank you note.
Do you know how difficult it is to write eleven different versions of a thank you note? I guess I could have written one version and copied it eleven times, but I kept thinking that all of the people who I would be writing to are on the same team, and might see each other's notes. And more than anything, I wanted them to know how important their generosity was to us. So I wrote eleven thank you notes.
I feel a sense of accomplishment, and maybe a slight sense of closure. I told the same story eleven times, and I do have to say that I think I made each one as personal as I could. It was actually interesting, the writing equivalent of Monet's Cathedral at Rouen series. The basic message was the same: it meant a lot to us, but somehow I found different minor chords to sound in some of the notes. I hope they convey the thanks that they are supposed to.
And now, I just realized that I have written that thank you note for the twelfth time. Thanks again everyone for your support and generous hearts!
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