Jody’s poster magic

I have written before about the little things that meant so much to Jody, like the significance of hearts or when her car’s odometer hit an interesting sequence of numbers. But one of the most endearing, such-a-Jody way she celebrated others was by making posters. She loved creating them to mark special milestones and occasions.

For example, she made a poster for Austin’s eighth birthday, and every year after that, she’d simply add the current year’s birthday on top of the last. It became a tradition we all eagerly anticipated. When I came home after a month at Outward Bound, she greeted me with a huge poster on the front of the house, with “28 days!” in bold letters. When we were in Boston for a game at Fenway Park and Austin and Brittany couldn’t join us, she even glued sea shells we had gathered on the beach to the poster.

Last year, when the kids returned from two weeks in Europe, Jody greeted them at the airport with two signs: one that read, “We missed you!” with pictures of their two dogs, and the other with our picture on it saying, “Us too!” The kids were exhausted after an eleven-hour flight home from London but perked up immediately when they saw Jody and her signs.

There was something so sweet and genuine about the time she took to create those hand-drawn posters. It was her way of letting you know just how much she loved you, because to Jody, love was an action verb. She did it all the time, always finding a way to make everything feel a little more special. And it’s one of the many reasons we miss her so much.