The Holiday Card is DONE!

It's been a thin year for receiving cards I can't help but observe. Maybe people are too sad or broke to send them out.I get that. Two weeks ago I thought about not sending a card either. For one thing they’re a lot of work if you’re crazy enough to want to make your own like I’ve been doing since the early 90s.It’s assembling the exact right photos that I find hard. Then if you have kids over nine never mind over19 they want to exercise their right to censor what you say. There’s all this back and forth where I’m going to them with hat in hand saying "Is this ok? Can I say this?" Or in the case of the pictures themselves asking, “This one is good of you, right?” and the answer is usually No.It’s a marathon, doing the holiday card.I got lucky this year though, when a young person in my life showed me this feature on MS Publisher that lets you just choose your however-many favorite photos and make a collage of them.I did that and here it is. On the front of the Marotta Family card these pictures of the people who made my year:Then of course there's a message on the inside that mentions who people are, who lived us with us for a while and who is about to deliver our third grandchild.It mentions the fact that my children’s dad, Old Dave himself, maintains he can't tell the difference between his two daughters from the back and so on.It's kind of a silly card but that’s OK. There’s no bragging in it anyway and this year I gave up trying to say anything funny about myself.The card just gives a short cheery shout-out, which is all anybody expects from a holiday card.And now that it’s done I’m glad I made it and sent it to all those people who never send to me.It’s a lot like writing a blog come to think of it and there’s a good reminder for us all: to just send our little message of good will out there without worrying about who sends the same back to us..