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From Eight Letters, A Life-Affirming Note
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Each time I hit "send" my heart pounded in my throat as if it were something I accidentally swallowed. When I dropped the first two handwritten cards in the mailbox, I felt slightly embarrassed but flipped up the flag anyway. There's something strangely risky about sending a thank-you out of the blue. But the rewards far outweigh the risks. What a high it's been.
I e-mailed a thank-you to a woman whom I've never met but who was very kind to me in the beginning of my career. A busy editor often can overlook a query from an unknown writer, but her lengthy response was full of solid advice and her comments to a novice greatly appreciated. I finally found the guts, almost two years later, to tell her that. Within hours, she wrote back. I braced for the response I feared:
Dear Ms. Jane Mascarells: I'm a very busy woman and don't remember helping you out two years ago. Sorry. If I did, you must have caught me on a very good day.
Nope. She didn't call me a buffoon with too much time on her hands or a kiss-up. She even spelled my name right:
"Hi Janene! What an absolutely lovely letter! I cannot TELL you what this means to me!"
She also wrote that she was having a really tough day and my note not only made her day, it made her year. We exchanged a few chatty e-mails since then and are now working together on something.
I had no idea how powerful a simple, sincere and specific thank-you could be. I have no intention of sending a thank-you note to Lou, the deli manager who always gives me a slice of cheese to eat while I'm shopping -- a flirty wink is thanks enough. But I have made it my goal to not be afraid to show appreciation, for big things and small. If the president of Nabisco wants to respond to my thanking him for those 100-calorie snack-packs, then so be it. So far I'm up to recipient No. 11 on my thank-you list of 26 and growing. There is one person I haven't been able to reach.
So, to that beautiful woman wearing a bright red hat on a Florida beach in 1996: Thank you.
