My friend Linda texted me to please not send a thank you note to her for her gifts this year because we are family – no notes necessary. I had to laugh when I read the text because of my relationship to my mother Granny Selma and her obsession with thank you notes.

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s my mother was very big on manners, etiquette, making sure we did the “right” thing in every social situation. She felt being from a small town did not justify inappropriate behavior – ever. We might not have money, but she insisted we have manners.

She was a stickler for a thank you note for EVERYTHING. Not just gifts, parties, meals, gatherings, visits…no sirree. If you sent us a Christmas card, my mother wrote you a Thank You note. Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but maybe not.

Those notes included family, too. If I gave my folks a gift, for Christmas, I got a thank you note. If they gave me a gift, she expected a thank you note. And not one the next month. She wanted that note in her hands within a week.

So imagine my surprise in the last few years of her life when she still had her right mind that she began saying, Now let’s don’t write each other thank you notes this year. What? Did I hear that correctly? NO THANK YOU NOTES for the YEAR! Sacrilege. I should have suspected she was on the verge of something horrible right that minute.

This year I have had a Birthday/Anniversary week with multiple gifts, dinners, lunches, and cards from a host of friends who have celebrated with me and Pretty during the past several days and I have fought the urge to write each of you individual notes a la Granny Selma.

Instead, I took pictures of many of the cards I received and am writing a very personal Thank You via cyberspace. I very much appreciate each of you – and you know who you are. We’re family.