When I was young, I took after my mother and was exceedingly conscientious with correspondence and thank you notes. My sister Marjie was not quite as ‘on it’ as I was and she would occasionally have to deal with nagging from our grandmother and grandma’s sister Aunt Nellie, who tended to be the etiquette police
Sandy and I got married in Pittsburgh in August 1983. We were living in New York at the time. Wedding gifts poured in from friends and family members. Some were sent to our apartment in NY but many others were sent to my parents house in Pittsburgh.
Of course, I was on a mission when it came to getting thank you notes out in a timely manner.
After the wedding I remember having all hands on deck. Sandy and I sat on the floor of my childhood bedroom and methodically opened the gifts. Other family members joined the team and helped make a list of who had given what. We were a little pressed for time before we needed to head to the airport.
The plan was to leave all of the gifts in Pittsburgh for the time being. We would get them all the next time we did the seven hour drive. At that point we would load up the car and bring everything home.
One gift added a lot of levity to the moment. We opened the wrapping, and we read the card from some of Sandy’s cousins.
Dear Judy and Sandy,
We are sorry that we weren’t able to join you on this special day
Yada yada yada
We opened the box. Inside was a bowl (we got a lot of those).
Inside the bowl was a card addressed to those cousins
Dear So and So
Happy wedding..etc etc etc
It was a re-gift with the card still inside!
We had widely shared the story, so we couldn’t resist bringing it to the next wedding that we attended. Along with our gift, they also got the regifted bowl, now with both cards inside. That bowl made the rounds for years, collecting all of the cards along the way, until we lost track of it. Maybe someone actually liked it enough to keep it.
After our wedding, gifts continued to trickle in. Back in New York, I was working nights at a local hospital and I took advantage of any downtime while the patients were sleeping; this is when I would do most of the thank you notes.
Sandy’s job was to address the envelope and write what the gift was in the top right corner where it would get covered by a stamp.
He kept me entertained.
The notes on the envelope would be:
6 useless bowls that we will never use
A very ugly plate
Oh yay, a blender
My job was to write the actual thank you note.
I would take a stack of cards and envelopes with me every night. I was a machine. I was going to get this done in record time….until I ran into a problem.
There was a gift (a bowl, shocking) from someone called Baruch Levy. The name wasn’t familiar and we didn’t have an address.
I asked my grandmother if this was someone she knew. Nope
We checked with Sandy’s parents along with his three remaining grandparents.
“Is Baruch Levy a friend of yours? We got a wedding gift from him and I need to send him a thank you card.”
This was long before the internet. I was stuck. And yet, it gnawed at me. I had gotten a gift and not sent an acknowledgement.
Months passed.
Over Thanksgiving, Sandy and I drove to Pittsburgh. At dinner Marjie had an odd twinkle in her eye.
“So, did you ever finish all of your thank you notes?”
“No!, in fact it is driving me crazy, I have no idea who Baruch Levy is.
At this point she was cracking up.
“OMG, you didn’t!!!”
Surely enough, she confessed, She had picked a random name (of an old Jewish Man, so as not to raise suspicion) and had just stuck the gift in the pile.
She got me.
Family members caught on quickly whenever odd gifts would show up; we pretty much assumed that we knew the origin.
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