Saving the Best for Last

Many years ago, before the addition of the children, I was the type of person who always sent birthday cards, thank-you notes, and new-baby gifts. Today, I’m lucky if people get a “Happy B-day!” from me on Facebook. My grandmother would probably be rolling over in her grave (were she not cremated). She was the type of person who severed friendships if people failed to reciprocate when she sent a Christmas card.

For a long time, I was extremely edgy about the card thing (see severing grandmother). I remember how stressed out I got over our wedding thank-you’s. With the combination of my obsessive need to personalize every note and the uncontrolled fibromyalgia that made holding a pen rather painful, I basically wrote myself into a tizzy.

As I’ve grown older and oh-so-much wiser, I’ve slowly stopped beating myself up about not being perfect. That’s critical — especially for a person like me, who’s been know to have crying fits over things like burning a pot full of artichokes or getting a spaghetti stain on her most expensive pair of pants. The side-effect, however, has been a complete lapse in the birthday card/thank-you note/baby gift department. How many people are secretly ready to sever me, I’m not entirely sure.

The thing is — and I’m going to try to explain this as best I can without sounding like an asshole — I think I’ve always been good at taking care of people. I keep tabs on people’s problems. I get called in a crisis. And I help whenever I can. At least, I have in the past. But lately, I feel like I’ve been falling down on the job, and I’m not sure why. I don’t know if it’s me or if there are just way to many fires to put out. Or maybe it’s that same story about getting older — the longer you live, the more crap you see go down.

So in the interest of letting everyone who I love dearly and has been unjustly neglected recently, I’m making a quick laundry list of my major offenses. When it comes down to it, this is really a self-serving exercise because it will hopefully stop the chatter that starts up the second my head hits the pillow:

• Check on friend who’s had third back surgery and still can’t even be up for more than an hour.

• Check on friend who had to put dog down last Saturday. Should’ve done this a week ago. Should’ve done this every day.

• Get/Make something for friend whose newborn is in the ICU and unexpectedly has Down’s Syndrome. Try to think of something to write that doesn’t sound stupid.

• Figure out why friend was/is in the hospital.

• Write thank-you notes to cousins in Hawaii for sending gifts home with dad. Understand that in addition to flailing on the thank-you’s, I would also fail to get them equally cool stuff if they came and visited me here.

• Acknowledge friend who’s had more miscarriages than I have fingers. Even though she makes it seem like it’s no longer a big deal.

• Send card to friend whose mother died. I, of all people, should be on top of this one.

I once said that I had more than a hundred but less than a million things on my to-do list. That still holds true, but these seven things (and some others I’m sure I’ve failed to mention) fall into the “highlighted” category. So what’s my problem? I think it may come down to “putting the oxygen mask on yourself before helping the person next to you.” At any given time, my emotional tanks seem to be running low, and I’m not exactly sure how to fill them up again. And so the easy stuff — like cleaning the bathroom and finding a lost toy and writing a blog post — gets done first.

So I will send this post to the forgotten ones. The neglected ones. Ironically, the most loved and most loving ones. Because aren’t those the people who we can feel the most secure about disappointing? The ones who we can have squarely in the highlighted column and still put at the bottom of the to-do list.

The ones who we know most certainly wouldn’t sever us over a forgotten Christmas card.