Dear Friends
As a young girl, I was encouraged to promptly write thankyou notes for birthday and Christmas gifts. I’m sure the sight of my beginner’s cursive on the pale blue envelopes my mother provided was cause for smiles at my grandparents’ homes. I can just imagine their voices saying, “Yes, Inez is teaching Phyllis proper manners, just as we expected.” I am just as certain there were times when I surely protested and delayed the writing of those simple missives. But Mother was patient, and I became a willing letter and note writer in my teen years. In continuing to follow a practice dictated years ago by my mother’s sense of propriety and my desire to please her, I feel I am giving expression to one of the genteel arts that help…
