A Message From Peg

Dear Everyone-who-participated-in-making-my-wonderful-surprise-weekend-a-reality.

I'm a writer, and words are my stock in trade, but words seem so inadequate.  I can't believe all the kindness and generosity and hard work you expended to pull off just about the biggest surprise--multiple surprises, really--I've ever experienced in my life.

As I told a few of you, I had one hint--just one--that something special was being planned, but I had no idea of the scale of the surprise.  Rob had used my computer to send some email to fellow conspirators and hadn't minimized his email in-box, so I caught a couple words in an email header: "Peg...reservation...surprise" and I thought, uh oh, I better not read anymore.

A birthday dinner, how lovely.  Well, I wouldn't let on that I knew.

I just had no idea.

Betsy has told you, step by step, all the things that were planned for me.  My family knows me very well, and they had assembled just about every element imaginable of the things I like to do when I want to give myself pleasure.  I was given a weekend at a spa getaway, complete with books, chocolate, lovely walks, quiet, exercise classes, a full body massage, great meals (that I didn't have to plan, cook or clean up) eating food that I LIKED!  It included both alone time and the company of some of the people I loved the most.  I lingered past the time I was told to come home because I was enjoying myself so much (good thing, too, because with the scale of work that everyone had cut out for themselves, they needed every moment they had).  I remember thinking to myself as I drove home, relaxed and smiling, "I hope everyone will be content if I make something simple for dinner.  I think there's some bratwurst in the freezer."

Rob cleverly distracted me when I got out of the car so that I didn't notice the new garage door.  There was a new welcome mat at the back door, and a new rag rug just inside.  The girls were standing there, beaming from ear to ear, with two of their friends, Neysa and Corwyn. And then I came all the way into the kitchen and saw....oh my goodness!

After that, it was just one astounding thing after the other. The table was set beautifully for dinner, with my great grandmother's gold-edge dishes, but there was a new chandelier!  And a new rug under the dining room table! Our old rug was so tattered and ragged, that the edges literally were held together by duct tape to keep us tripping over the unraveling edge.  This new rug was an entirely different sort: beautiful, thick and luxurious and worth many times the one we used to have.  They led me upstairs and I almost shrieked when I saw the bed.  Our old bed was twenty-seven years old and sagged in the middle like a hammock.  There was a broken spring sticking out of the side that threatened to gouge my calf every time I walked by.  But I had never ever dreamed I could possibly have a new bed.  A new bed was a fantasy for the far and distant future--I had never even considered when we would be able to do it.  Not now, not ever.  Yet there was a brand new bed.  A new picture hung over the bed of the St. Paul Winter Carnival ice palace, but the large cover mock up for The Wild Swans, Rob said, was going to be framed, too and would replace it; that had already been arranged.  The computer table had been set up in my soon-to-be computer nook, and a new standing light fixture made it bright and cheerful.

Then they took me out and showed me the garage door.  My garage door is not electrified, and the panels were so broken that I had to push at a break in the metal to get it to close, and it was splitting more and more every day--but again, an new garage door was an impossibility.

It was so beyond what I could have imagined upon coming home. I've been sitting here struggling for words to express my shock, my excitement, my gratitude and the humility of my thanks.  If you received even one one-hundredth of the joy you have given me, you are richly repaid.  I love you all so much, and I truly think it was the best surprise I have ever received.

With all my heart,
Peg