When "Love" Isn’t Enough

My Mom was the kind of person who never sent a greeting card without first underlining the words in it that she wanted to emphasize.

As far back as I can remember, my birthday cards, graduation cards, Valentine ’s Day cards, May Day cards, Easter cards, first-day-of-school cards (okay, Mom sent a lot of cards), came with these little rhinestoned words that bejeweled her greeting.

It might be words like “special,”  “thank you,” “means so much,” or “favorite” (but so were my seven other siblings).  In one first-day-of-summer card, she underlined the words, “you are my fairy princess.” While it went with the glittery Cinderella on the cover, I wondered if my preppy-pink polo phase had maybe run its course. Turns out she put the wrong card in the envelope. But to this day, I still get a warm feeling whenever I try on a new shoe.

Over the years, I learned that her punctuated words weren’t random but part of an elaborate set of rules. For example, the word, “love” required at least two underlines.  The same applied to the “X” in “XOXO.” As she got older, the convention was updated to triple underlines. 

Not to be confined by just the underline, her stylebook also included other punctuation. The recipient’s name must always appear in quotes at the beginning of the inside copy. The exclamation point is permissible (frankly mandatory) after the last sentence. Emoticons should never appear in the margins—“Why would you ruin such a nice reading,” she’d remark.

It wasn’t as though this was the only way I knew how she felt. I was lucky enough to hear her say it too. Underlines were just her special way of emphasizing what I knew already. Like how after she’d squeeze three times before letting go of your hand after the Sign of Peace at mass. I knew I was special.

These days I feel a little deflated when I get a card without any underlines. So I’m carrying on the tradition. Every time I do, I hear her voice between each quotation mark, feel her three-squeeze handhold in the exclamation mark and see her smile with each underscore.

And I’m happy to announce that the tradition will not die with me either. My son has adopted the wearin’ of the underline in his own cards too. He recognizes particularly heartfelt prepositions like “for,” “with,” or “of.”

He’s so “special.”