Okay, I feel really bad… well maybe more sort of bad? Not great? I have a semblance of an emotion…
Aha there we go! Semblance of emotion. Right.
Thoughts, good and bad, tend to come at me in weird, almost attack style ways. Each aiming to grab hold of my brain power and force me into full blown, long term ponders. Usually the most determined of these thoughts present themselves as ideas, things I need to think out and develop.
Not today.
Today, all day, the same reoccurring thought trying desperately to take over the rest of my thoughts was about one of those business card size gift note cards.
The card in question has been sitting, patiently glued in my scrapbook, waiting for my attention for months. Why it sprung to mind now, I have no idea. It is not a particularly exciting card, just a few signatures that went along with a much bigger more exciting card.
What caught my mind about it was a vague memory that there was a comment on it that went beyond the excitement of trying to decode an actual name from a signature and the desire to know what the comment, if it existed, said. After fifteen hours of debating the hassle of pulling out my buried scrapbook or letting the wonder die off, I finally caved to the insistent thought and discovered that there were actually two brief comments.
The one that I had vaguely remembered was not worth the effort. Mainly because I have no idea of the meaning behind it. The writer thought to tell me that they thought that “ I would get a kick out of it”. Re-reading that and having no idea what kick I was supposed to get out of what reminded me of why that comment had stood out in my brain enough to trigger its own thought all these months later. At the time I received the card, I also had ZERO idea what kick I was supposed to get out of what. Now that I have re-read the card, I remember asking the person who wrote it what it meant and being told, with a smile, that I would laugh about it later. I am really clueless on that one still. Especially surprising because the person who wrote it and I were usually on the same wavelength and I feel strongly that I should know what this secret code means???
I discovered a second comment that had completely lapsed from my memory. It made me feel incredible guilt because it proudly stated how thoroughly surprised I had been at the event at which I received the card. I wasn’t. Not at all. Oh the guilt of it only really hit when I discovered the pride of this “surprise”. I don’t think that I could have been more unsurprised if I had tried. I knew at the time that the persons planning it didn’t want me to know about the event but I thought there was a mutual unspoken understanding that I knew all. In my own ways I helped to coordinate the event, made some changes and amendments, oh and might have made sure to have been copied on an email with event details. I arranged the day and suggested the time etc. I was the child at Christmas who not only wrote out a wish list but also called the stores to reserve and prepay for each item on the list.
It was a lovely event, one that I have on many an occasion remembered fondly. Each time feeling instantly enveloped by warmth and comfort, love and protection.
I more than knew what was coming that day, I longed for it. Both in the days and weeks leading up to it and for many months after. It was a perfect day and a perfect celebration. I would not change anything about it. I am glad I knew about it before hand, it was a wonderful something to look forward to.
But knowing that there was such epic pride at successfully surprising me is a guilty feeling. Maybe I should have written a wish list and not called the stores? I don’t know. I hope to never have to confess directly to this comment’s author that I knew exactly what was happening not only because I was in on it but also because I was crafting it.
Ironically, I am quite surprised that the author believed me to have been surprised. That surprise, is nothing that I could have contributed to planning or that I could have expected.
