Sometimes, all I can say is "wow"

I am completely humbled by the response to Operation Mailing Chocolate.

All week, I've been receiving messages from people who received my packages. They were spread out over days - texts and emails and cards in the regular mail - like little gifts to make each day this week a little brighter, a little easier to manage.

And then came today. I woke this morning to a gazillion Facebook notifications (okay, that's an overstatement, but there were A LOT) from friends offering kind thoughts. In my physical mailbox, greeting cards from two good friends - one who knew my mom for many years and said she was "funny and wacky and didn't take any crap" and then said the same about me (which was AWESOME).

Then the texts. One friend took her chocolate TO THE GRAND CANYON (I mean, yeah, she lives in Arizona, but still). Another sent me a picture text of her eating the chocolate I sent. Others sent virtual hugs and love and all kinds of goodness.

At today's bout, my derby wife presented me with a bag of baked goodies that would've made Ma (who taught me to show my appreciation in baked goods) exceptionally proud. I shared Ma's favorite cookies (which are A BITCH to make, but I made them anyway) with some of my favorite derby people. Our announcer, Pixie Quikenwitty, said that she could feel Ma there. I think I could, too. At the very least, I could feel her in all the love and support that seemed to be overflowing from all angles.

Back home, I had emails waiting for me from two of my Top Five Favorite People on the Planet -- even though both had emailed me earlier in the week -- reminding me once again why they are so dear to me.

And here I sit, marveling at how a day I thought would be really hard and painful turned into something beautiful. I've still got another 25 years of loan payments before I pay off my MFA in creative writing. I should be able to come up with more to say than, "Wow." But it's the one word that just keeps rattling around in my head right now.

It still sucks to be motherless, but it stings a little less knowing that there are so many good, kind people in my life. Take the night off, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, because we've worked on love A LOT today....

"You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

- Steve Jobs



Steve Jobs died yesterday, the same age my mother was when she died almost exactly two years ago.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

 Even in a life that is much too short, even fighting your own body to keep it going, even without a formal education, you can change the world in miraculous ways. Thank you, Mr. Jobs, for setting that example. For reminding me and so many other people to never settle, to stay hungry and foolish.

“Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.”

- Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

I was reminded of this quote the other day while looking at a picture of some of the sticky notes Daniel, John, and I posted around New York City during my Memorial Day weekend 2010 trip.

It was well-timed, because I'd just sent my Operation Mailing Chocolate packages, but I'd realized that I left something out of the notes I included in the packages: Why I chose the people who received them.

Part of it was practicality: I had their mailing addresses and none of them were people I would be seeing in person any time soon.

But, really, it's more than that.

The joke in our family was always that my mom only told my sisters and me that she loved us if one of us was getting on a plane (she was TERRIFIED of flying). It was a joke, but it was also true. (Until the last few months of her life, when she also started telling us she loved us before surgical procedures and when she was admitted to the hospital.)

It's part of why I've made such an effort in the last two years to make sure people know what I think of them. (And why in the last two years I've ended more conversations with "Love you" than I had in the cumulative 30 years prior -- to paraphrase Neil Gaiman "because it's a good thing to say if you can mean it.")

Love, gratitude -- simple but powerful, and good to express if you mean it.

And I do.

Because every person who received (or has yet to receive) one of those packages has made it possible for me to believe in kindness and magic and the goodness in this world after an experience that left me feeling, well, not so sure about any of those things anymore. It was a collection of gestures large and small (and, honestly, even the "small" ones were pretty huge to me) that made me laugh and made me feel loved and made me a better, kinder, braver human being.

And so, OF COURSE, these would be the people I turned to when I needed some happy thoughts to counteract all the sad ones, when I needed to feel connected (even if it was only in a metaphorical sense).