Greeting cards

Last week was my mother’s birthday and I was tearing the house apart looking for the card I had bought in January to send to her in April. It was the perfect card and I had waited to send it so that it would arrive on her birthday. Like the socks that regularly disappear from the dryer, I’m sure I’ll find hundreds of unsent cards in a great cosmic box in my attic someday. I was forced to buy another card.

I find this situation doubly frustrating as I am loathe to plunk down $3.99 for a greeting card. If you are really ready to splurge, you can spend more than $6.99 for a card that actually sings to the recipient. Once upon a time, I liked nothing more than to prowl stationery stores and collect cards to send to all manner of friends and family on a regular basis. When the price of a card rose above $1.99, I slowed my sending and eventually joined the rest of the world in communicating via email, and increasingly, by text.

I was waiting for a train the other day and found myself in a book store, (a topic for another day my friends!) flipping through the large selection of cards. Some of them were really funny. Some displayed the perfect sentiment for a friend who has been woefully neglected, even by email. I parted with a $20 bill and vowed to make good use of those cards and indeed, I did.

I used to spend hours on the phone with my college roommate, my cousin in New Jersey, my neighbor next door. Today, I cannot determine how I was able to do this and still manage to get dressed, eat regularly and manage the family’s needs. Today, I don’t really enjoy chatting on the phone and find myself preferring to send an email because I can communicate on my exact schedule. It seems that there is less and less time for really personal communication.

Email is dangerous, I think, because the written word can be taken out of context. There is no voice inflection, softening smile, gesticulation for emphasis. Most of the time, there is also no punctuation or grammar, making it even more difficult to understand precisely what the writer is trying to convey. While I absolutely love emoticons, they are a poor substitute indeed. Sigh. Even articulate people I know come across as scattered and crazy in their email missives. Don’t get me started on texting – I just hate its staccato intrusiveness and downright rudeness in its brevity. No salutation, no sign off with affection, respect or sincerity, no warmth.

The cards I bought the other day have gone to some friends who I have not laid eyes on in years; have not talked to in months; but I think of them nearly every day. They are busy people and I often think that I don’t want to interrupt work, family, whatever they are doing, whenever I think to pick up the phone. These cards are perfect to send as they will carry my feelings and allow their recipients to read them at their leisure. No interruptions required. It is not necessary to use a specified number of characters and I can heap on the adjectives to my heart’s content. One of these is a birthday card that I thought was simply perfect for a particular friend. Her birthday unfortunately falls at the beginning of the school year and is often forgotten until November at which point I’m simply too embarrassed to send along such greetings. I thought to avoid the ripping-the-house-apart scenario by simply sending the darned thing when I thought to do so. She is one of those people who opens her mail regularly and will probably get to reading it by the weekend, if not before. I know she will appreciate birthday greetings anytime of the year.

Mailing things to younger people, especially college students, is a completely different animal. This generation receives and pays its bills online. They communicate with each other, their professors, and everyone else via electronic means. If I want to get my son’s attention, I must send him a text asking him to check his email which will remind him to go to his physical mailbox to retrieve the cheery, tangible card I have mailed to him.

A carefully selected, hand-written, mailed with a stamp and your name penned in cursive on the envelope, is a rare gift. This little package of paper is actually a bit of time, thought and effort to send forth someone has expended on your behalf. Somehow, the increasing use of evites, e-cards and other ways to send greetings via computer, smart phone or tablet device, makes this simple thing so very special. The card you hold represents a serious portion of time where the sender has removed her hands from any of these electronic devices, removed her brain from the constant stream of intrusion these things carry, removed herself from any other pressing task to apply her full attention to something just for you. All that for $3.99 plus postage. Perhaps sending a card via snail mail is something of a bargain after all.

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