Invitations Are Out

The holiday season, always a special time for me, officially begins October 22 of each year, when the youngest member of my family gets a year older, hopefully a year wiser, and becomes the proud owner of another birthday letter written just for him from me. I don't know what possessed me to start writing birthday letters to JMV -- but I think it had something to do with his being the last duck out of the nest, and writing a birthday letter to him each year made the nest seem less empty. I've written birthday letters to my older two children, on occasion, but they never seem to have appreciated them as much as JMV seems to.

A birthday letter is not like a holiday letter that so many people send out, me not being one of them. I was going to send a holiday letter out one year and spent days writing it, revising it, and then adding decorative touches to it to be sure it was memorable. Where I made my mistake was emailing it to my three kids and my husband for "their ideas," prior to mailing it out. Their consensus was that I never write a holiday letter again and that I should under no circumstances send out this one, or any other one for that matter. Thus ended the holiday letter cycle -- now I send out a holiday card with our pictures on it. The good thing about the holiday photo card is since I know how to use photoshop, I can add a different head or face onto the card --- which has come in quite handy on more then one occasion, but that's a whole other topic for another day.

Birthday letters are summaries of the person's accomplishments during the past twelve months; the high points are discussed and the low points are totally ignored, hoping no one will ever remember any of them, or speak of them again. My eternal love for the recipient is always expressed, explaining how mother-love is all accepting, adding the "I will always be there for you" phrase, how the days are brighter because of this person's existence, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da. Writing the birthday letter to JMV each year has been a love fest for me, a tradition that will continue so he doesn't think I forgot, was too busy, or love him less then last year. It also helps me plump up the nest a little bit. I also enjoy reading letters from years past. While I write the birthday letter and revise it, I wait till later in the evening of the day before his birthday to send it to him. He, on the other hand, is probably hoping I skip a year or two, but I don't.

When JMV was younger and had a birthday party with real kids at it, not just his parents and siblings, we always had a pumpkin carving contest, complete with small pumpkins and somewhat safe carving tools ('twas the season), and the ever popular musical chairs contest. I am hoping JMV has been able to get through his birth day without taking a knife to a pumpkin, or racing someone to the last seat in his law school lecture hall that day.

Immediately after the birthday letter I create the invitation to the next holiday: Thanksgiving dinner, sent to my three children, my mother, my daughter's mother-in-law, and anyone else who we think should be invited that year. And every year since I started sending invitations inviting my kids to dinner on Thanksgiving, rather then just assuming they would show up, they joke about waiting for the mail and breathing a sigh of relief because for one more year, they made the cut.

The invitations for the Thanksgiving celebration were mailed last week and the guests have been responding. We are up to ten now, a good number, plus two babies. Let the holiday season officially begin!