When Brady and Sullivan were baptized, I made handmade invitations. They were beautiful, if I do say so myself.
With Colin’s baptism fast approaching, I abandoned any thought I had of making handmade invitations. I decided to order an invitation from Snapfish. When I picked them up at Meijer, I looked for envelopes for the 5×7 invitations but didn’t see any. Later that day, Mark said he was going out to run a few errands so I asked him to stop by Office Max to get the envelopes.
When he came home, he launched into a story about how he couldn’t find the right envelopes and he even had a store employee help him. I must confess, I only heard about half of what he said, but sometimes when you are changing a diaper, and have a three year old attached to your leg, and a five year old doing super flips off his bed, you can only pay attention to so much. I got the gist that it was an ordeal for him, but that he came home with envelopes that would work.
The week got away from me, and before I knew it, it was three weeks before the baptism and I still hadn’t addressed the envelopes. I pulled out the bag Mark had brought home and opened the box. Inside was an assortment of brightly colored envelopes… neon, if you will. They were big, much bigger than the 5×7 invitations.
Many years ago, my older sister and mom were in a vet’s waiting room with one of their animals. By their account, the ugliest dog ever known to man was also in the waiting room. When the vet assistant came out to call the ugly dog back, she gasped and exclaimed, “My, what a colorful dog!” That’s how I felt about the envelopes.
I knew I needed to handle this delicately. I remembered that Mark had been flustered when he came home from the store. I said, “These are a little big.”
“I know! Don’t you remember? I TOLD you that I couldn’t find the right ones but the guy at Office Max said these would work.”
“Oh, okay. Didn’t they have white?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Yes, they had white but then I would have had to buy like 100 envelopes and I didn’t want you to make fun of me.” Mark sounded exasperated now.
A few years ago I asked Mark to buy a tea light for our jackolantern. He came home with 2 bags of 100. That would be 200 tea lights. I can’t tell that story with a straight face. Ever.
Poor Mark, it must be difficult to try to be a mind reader, trying to make choices for your wife and never knowing what purchase might send her into a fit of giggles and lead to her still telling the story 5 years later.
By the time I discovered the offending envelopes, it was Sunday night. I decided to just go with it, they are just going to end up in the garbage anyway. As I got down to the last invitation, I thought it seemed weird that the envelope holding the invitations still felt so thick. I reached in and pulled out a stack of envelopes. They were lovely, white 5×7 envelopes and had, apparently, come with the invitations. I looked at the neat stack of already addressed large, colorful envelopes and then looked longingly at the white envelopes. I considered redoing all of them but my fatigue won and I called it quits for the night. We invited immediate family only and I figured they wouldn’t judge me too harshly on the envelope that the invitation came in.
I’m pretty sure that even a year ago, I would have redone the invitations because it would have made me crazy to send them out in oversized neon envelopes. What’s happened to me? Has the rigor of being a mom to three active boys and a wife to a man that works too many hours made me so laid back that I no longer care about how a less-than-perfect invitation reflects on me as a person?
Yep, that’s what happened.