Dear You

One thing that depresses me more then it should is shopping for a greeting card. I pretty much loath holidays that require purchasing a card for someone. If I know the person I'm buying the card for well, I'll pick out something silly; like a Spanish or religious card, or I'll buy a child's birthday card with a picture of Barbie on it...but I always make it a point to write something somewhat meaningful, preferably funny (years of sarcasm has made it very hard for me to be sentimental) in the card. I find it a huge waste of money when I receive a card that has some generic poem or some trite message, which the sender then signs, stamps, and sticks in the mailbox. I've saved very few cards that I've received in my life, but all the ones I've saved say something special from the sender.

Today I overheard my mom call my brother to remind him to send my grandmother a Mother's Day card, then I heard her say "all I want is a card"...fuck. So, full of dread, I stopped by Walgreen's this afternoon. First of all, I've never in my life found a card with a preprinted message that even comes close to describing how I feel about the person I'm purchasing the card for. After each card I picked up, read, and stuffed back into it's (wrong) slot, I became more and more panicky. I wandered away from the Mother's Day section to see if I could find something whimsical, but then I realized that my 96 year old grandma probably wouldn't see the humor in a Quinceañera card, and after all my mother's done for me in the past month, she deserved more then a "God Cares" card.

By this time I had inadvertently read all the card section labels, which never fail to depress the living hell out of me. Why? Because when I see sections with titles like "I Still Believe In Us", "Lets Fix This Together" and "Cope/Serious Illness" I can't help but think that there's going to be a time in my life that I'm going to actually be looking for a card in that section. It didn't help that the world's worst music was being piped into the store particularly loudly, namely "She's Like The Wind" which never fails to remind me of Patrick Swayze's once successful career which is now just a faded memory for him. God, I'm a wreck aren't I?

Since I wasn't able to find a card that fit my mother, and the one I made up in my head was a little harsh:
Dear Mom,
Since you've been on Lexapro you've been the mother I always wished you would be when I would cry myself to sleep at night as a child. I'm very nervous about the day when you decide to stop taking it.
Love,
Georgia

as was the one I made up for my grandma:
Dear Grandma,
I really love you, but when I hang out with you it makes me depressed because you're SO FUCKING OLD!, and it makes me think that if I were that old I'd probably kill myself and then it makes me wonder if you ever think about that and then I feel like a horrible person.
xo,
Georgia

So I gave up and just picked out two of the most generic cards I could find, to which I'll sign my name and stuff in an envelope, thus fulfilling my duties as someones child. But if you think I'm not going to worry that one of my cousins got my grandma the same card that I did, then you don't know me very well.