The Card of Thanks in the County Paper

The other thing

I wrote four checks that night. The other bills I would mail as the money moved over from savings. My hand was steady.

When I got to the fourth one, which was to Bev, I stopped.

I sat there with the pen over the memo line and looked at the eleven bills, and I thought about the people behind them.

The dressmaker had sewn beads on by hand. Bev had found forty more plates of broasted chicken on two days’ notice. They had done nothing wrong. They deserved to be thanked.

Abby’s grandma Louise reads the card of thanks column in the county paper every week with a magnifying glass.

People in our part of Iowa still run them. When somebody dies, the family thanks the ambulance crew and the church women by name.

After a wedding, sometimes, the couple thanks their vendors. Small businesses here live on word of mouth, and a line in the paper means more to people like Bev than any review online.

“I want to put a card of thanks in the paper,” I said.

Abby looked up. “For the wedding?”

“For all eleven of them. By name.”

She knew what I meant before I finished saying it. I watched her figure it out, the same way I had.

If I thanked every vendor, I would have to say what I was thanking them for. And if I said what I was thanking them for, the whole county would read it.

“Sam,” she said, “are you sure?”

I want to be honest here, because I have told this story a few times now and I do not like the version where I come off as a saint. I was not sure.

I told myself it was about thanking people who did good work, and that was true. But part of me knew exactly what it would do. Part of me wanted it to.

“No,” I said. “I’m not sure. But I’m not going to write one word in it that isn’t true.”

Writing it

I wrote the first draft on the back of the hotel folio. It took me most of an hour.

Abby sat beside me and read every line, and when I wrote something mean, she put her finger on it and shook her head, and I crossed it out.

The first draft said “the suite my stepmother charged to us.” Abby put her finger on “charged to us.” I crossed it out and wrote “the suite enjoyed by my stepmother.” She nodded.

The first draft said “the forty guests Sherri invited without asking.” Abby’s finger. I wrote “the forty additional guests Sherri Pedersen kindly invited.” She frowned at “kindly” and I took that out too.

By the end it was just thank you notes, one after another, eleven of them, plain. Every word in it was true.

Every vendor was named, and so was every service, and so was the person it was for.

This is what it said, word for word, the way it ran:

Card of Thanks. Abby and I want to thank the people who made our June 6 wedding at the fairgrounds hall such a beautiful day.

Thank you to the hotel out on the highway for the suite and the room service enjoyed by my stepmother, Sherri Pedersen. Thank you to Karen Vande Berg of Orange City for the lovely custom gown she sewed for Sherri.