Tangible Thoughts

By: Samantha S. Daviss

I get made so much fun of for still carrying around my huge paper day planner. But with no disrespect, that thing is my personal Bible. I can’t live without it. I get teased for not keeping everything on my phone or in my computer, but to that I always say my day planner can’t fall in the toilet, the pool, or the washing machine.

I am a “paper trail” kind of girl. I love anything and everything paper. I love to touch books, feel their pages, and smell the old in their pages. I love to see my week of chores and activities laid out in front of me with all of my different color highlights for each family member in my day planner. And I love to send cards to friends for no reason at all. I used to do it all the time, but now that I’m a bit busier with three monkeys, I have fallen short; but nonetheless I love knowing that someone is on the other end receiving a card from me just because…no bills, no reminders, no invitations, just a card to say “I’m thinking about you”.

I think cards and letters are wonderful. It is something you can hold on to forever. Texts can be deleted, voice mails lost, and emails erased from this space in time. Where do they go? We will never know. Maybe they are in “the cloud”, maybe they are just gone…who knows. But a piece of paper will always be there.

That is why I have written letters to each of my boys, to let them know just how I feel. To let them know that no matter where life takes them, or takes me, I have no regrets never telling them how I feel about them, how proud they make me each and every day, and it is tangible. It is something they can always hold near and dear to their hearts. I have written letters of “good bye”, in case God feels it is my time too early; I have written letters of loving them and watching them grow; and I have written letters for when they become grown men, husbands, and fathers themselves. It is a letter of love, advice and encouragement.

Being able to hold something of someone you lost is so important. I have a little plush Teddy Bear magnet on my dryer that I found when I lost my mother in law. To most people it seems odd, but to me it is just a little piece of her that I get to see and touch every single day. Because I know it was on her dryer, and it was something she saw and touched every day, so it is just a chance for me to stay connected to her.

But more importantly I still have cards from her that she wrote to me. They are in a basket in my bathroom. In fact the very last card she wrote me was just because…

She was watching my boys for me one afternoon, and I came home to find this card on my counter, and it meant so much to me that I can recite it verbatim.

“You make me so proud every day to call you my daughter in law. I don’t know how you manage to do what you do every single day (on your own when my son is gone). You balance a house, three boys, a career, and everything else beautifully and with a smile.”

So you see three years later I still have that card, and I read it often. And it was just a simple $.99 card from the Dollar Store that touched me for the rest of my life. It is one of my most prized possessions. Not only because it was one of the last things I received from her, but because she did it just because.

I will always be able to touch, feel and see her handwriting in that card. That is something I couldn’t get from an email, or a text, or a voice mail. I feel the love and staying power of tangible items is a priceless gift that should never be forgotten.

Take the time to write that thank you note, or to send a card just because, or stick a Post-it on someone’s windshield just because. I promise you will affect them in ways deeper than you could every imagine. 

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