Gratitude

About a week before Thanksgiving we received a large manila envelope in the mail. Inside were specially cut pieces of construction paper in a variety of colors, along with “instructions” from one of our daughters-in-law. This holiday, due to the coronavirus, we wouldn’t be able to be with family, and she had devised a project aimed at drawing us together in a different way. She asked us to write things for which we were grateful on the colored papers, then send them back to her so she could hang them clothesline-style in their dining room for the holiday. She sent them to everyone in the family, and included self-addressed, stamped, 9 x 12 envelopes for return. There was a certain amount of grumbling on the part of my husband, who has never been fond of art projects even as far back as elementary school. As long as we had been told that decorating the papers was optional, I got out my small collection of rubber stamps, and his interest was piqued. In fact, the more we worked on it, the more gratifying it became. It turned out to be a lot of fun and on one of the pieces of construction paper, my husband ended up writing about being grateful for a daughter-in-law thoughtful enough to have us stop during the pandemic and take time to remember the good things.