Thursday Thank You Notes

I am running around like a mother with a sick child and a cranky toddler who needs to design a dinner table for Relief Society and get sharing time done by Sunday.
That isn't a witty metaphor. That's my life today.
And maybe I have not been feeling thankful enough for everything wonderful in my life. It is a gift to have a body that can run around and a blessing that my sick child is well enough to ask for movies and jello and a blessing that my cranky toddler still takes naps so I can write.

So every Thursday I will be picking a person at random and sending them a very sincere thank you on this blog. Keep watching - if you know me, there is probably one coming to you, too!
My first random, but well-deserved, thank you note goes to a mysterious do gooder.

Dear kind friend who may never read this,
I am writing to thank you for your generous kindness four years ago.
As you probably remember, my pregnancy with the Dancer went badly wrong and I could rarely leave my home except to go to the hospital for I.V.s and drugs that didn't work. Day after day, long night after long night, I sat trapped inside my four walls feeling like I was disappearing. People started to look through me instead of at me. I was just pain and misery and I can't blame anyone for not wanting to be around that.
And Easter came. The air smelled fresh. The Artist opened the windows to bring me a little piece of happiness when the scent of growing grass washed over me. I thought of the children going on Easter egg hunts and playing outside. I looked at my little daughter whose mother was suddenly AWOL. I couldn't go buy her candy or hide eggs. I couldn't play with her. The Artist was slammed with huge projects at work and a completely useless wife. I cried into my pillow thinking of what a miserable Easter this would be for the Cowgirl.
And the next day the doorbell rang.
We saw this:


Little candy-filled eggs littered our yard and flower beds. All for the Cowgirl. She didn't even have to battle oversized 4th grade boys or cave to screaming babies. She got it all. She felt like the star of the show. I watched from my bed on the couch and every time she flashed past the window she was smiling. Big.


And I sat there and cried and felt thankful for two things: First, that you were the mother to my child that I couldn't be. And second, that you remembered me. I felt so invisible. Everything that made me me was disappearing into a black hole of sickness and frustration, but you saw me and remembered me. You remembered that I would want to do something special for my child at Easter. You remembered that I would want her to have fun. You remembered that I needed help.
I won't pretend that I am not crying right now. I am. I wish I knew who you are. But maybe it is a blessing that I don't. Whenever I start to get upset with someone I can think, "But what if they were the one that left the Easter eggs?" In a way, you filled the world with people who love me because it could be any one of them.
Thank you. Four years later and forty years after this - Thank you.
love,
Tapper