Every time I sit down to write out the addresses on our holiday cards, I promise that the next year I will create labels.

It would be so much easier. So much faster.

But if I had created labels sooner, I wouldn’t feel the passage of time quite so strongly.

For the first time, the girls helped me with the cards. I can still remember the card we sent out the year before Caroline was born. We had captured a moment in time as our Boxer and tabby cat sat side by side and labeled the photo, “Peace on Earth.” So there was a time when we only had animals to include on our card and now we have children old enough to help stamp and seal the envelopes.

By keeping my holiday card addresses in an old fashioned address book, I watch this passage of time in a different way. I see names and addresses of people who we haven’t heard from in years but whose information remains in my book. I have erased names of spouses since divorced and penciled in names of new husbands or wives. I have erased old addresses and penciled in new ones. In doing so I am moved by the fact that these major life changes are marked in my book with the simple sweep of an eraser. Such sad and happy occurrences in one family are pencil marks in mine. Moves far away and moves back home. Marriages and divorces. Devastating diagnoses and amazing recoveries. All recorded in a small cream covered book.

Maybe I won’t feel so rushed to switch to labels after all…