Smiley Face

When writing a note to a family member or friend or leaving a reminder note to Larry, I quite often will sign my name and place a little smiley face next to it -- two dots for eyes and a smile but no circle around it.  It's rather a silly thing, but it makes me smile doing it and I hope it makes the reader smile, too.  Recently, while going through some items in our archives at work for the commemorative book I'm writing, I ran across a note that my mom had written to one of my former colleagues and there, next to her name, was the same type of smiley face.  I hadn't remembered my mom doing that very often, so it caught me by surprise.  As I looked at it, I felt as if she was smiling at me, perhaps happy that I'm taking such a keen interest in the history of the organization she had loved as her employer for so many years and that now I love as my employer, too.  So, as silly as it may be, I'll keep making those little smiley faces next to my name.  Perhaps it'll bring an unexpected happiness to someone else's day, just as much as seeing the one Mom had written some 15 years ago did for me today.