CHRISTMAS CARDS

Christmas Cards
It seems as though I am always working on a “project”. My current project is seasonal. A couple of weeks ago, Mary took me up to Vacaville to attend Kaiser’s “Open House”, and tour of their new Medical Clinic, which opened in November.
Afterwards, she took me over to the Factory Outlet shops so that I could look at Christmas cards. We ended up at Papyrus. They still had a good selection of cards, and they were marked “70% off “. I really was interested then. They were good quality cards. I determined this not only from the weight of the paper, but also because the envelopes were lined with gold-colored paper. When I was quite young, I was really impressed when my parents received such a card. I made one mistake. I didn’t associate the size of the cards, and the good quality of the paper, with requiring extra postage! When one is 90 years old , one would think that this reasoning would be intuitive.
I addressed the cards, and Sue offered to take our Christmas letter to Kinko’s for copies, and then stuff them in the envelopes, along with putting the stamps and return address labels on the envelopes. Some of the envelopes then looked like they might be overweight, so I checked them on my small-antique hand-held scale. Some were heavier than one ounce, while others weighed less than - or equal to one ounce. We decided that she would have the post office check their weights, and buy 17 cent stamps for the “heavy ones”. Sue was telling Tom about this, and his comment was “Don’t weigh each card, just buy a 17 cent stamp for each one.”
I kept thinking about his comment, Marie was diagnosed with dementia about nine months ago. Ever since I have read whatever article I saw on the subject, It is really fascinating how the brain works - or doesn’t work, as the case may be. However our difference in thinking is not brain related, but reflects how we were raised. My “learning” years occurred during the years of the Great Depression (the early 1930’s). Then, we didn’t have an extra 17 cents! With this money, we could have bought a loaf of bread, a quart of milk or a gallon of gas. So, we did what we had to do! In Tom’s formative years - some 35 years later, a family had more “wherewithal” for discretionary spending. His “Boomer generation learned to make life easier, rather than do what was dictated by the family’s economic circumstances.